When I'm Gone
by PinataParty
Summary: Reunited, Rick's group has nowhere to go. A new prospect of peace and fruitfulness casts aside the brief pain of shattered hopes for a new future. Unfortunately, nothing in life is free. (Absolutely will become AU; Rick G./O.C., Bethyl, occasional POV hopping between characters)
1. No Clarity

**A/N:** This will and is expected to turn AU very fast. I'm feeding off of S5E5 into a reunion and alternate plotline to whatever is going to happen in this recent season. If I get dry or boring, please feel free to be all UHG SO BORING in the reviews or message me. Criticism of my writing style welcome and appreciated!

**Chapter 1: No Clarity**

The church was silent, so silent it hurt Carl's ears, but nobody dared to say a word. The only sound was the slow, hushed breathing of everyone in the group, gathered among the pews in an uneven circle. Nobody had dared to lift their eyes to one another. It was not out of fear, but out of reluctance, collective shame for Eugene. It was at Eugene that Rick had fixed his cold, wrathful stare.

"I'm going to need you to say that again," Rick's voice was steady, level with an edge to it that made Carl's skin crawl.

Eugene hesitated for a moment, staring down at his feet, "I'm not a scientist."

His voice was so low and quiet that it did not even manage to ripple through the painful silence weighing down on the room. Rick's chest rose with a deep inhale through his nose, out in a low, terrible hiss of breath through his mouth.

"You made me risk my people, risk our people, so you could do what? Go on a vacation to D.C.?!" Rick's voice rose, lifted by his rage.

Eugene stayed silent, probably the best course of action considering the circumstances. It was Abraham who intervened, much to everyone's apparent surprise. All eyes moved to him when he broke the stillness.

"He's been punished, Rick. He punished himself," Abraham's fist clenched and unclenched twice before he spoke again, "It's been dealt with. We don't have time for this, we need a new plan, we need to keep moving forward."

Rick turned his wrath on Abraham now, but the large redheaded man was a daunting prospect and he felt himself cool just a little, "Move forward to where?! Eugene was forward! What do you propose we do now, huh?!"

Abraham kept his temper in check and tried to inflate himself, feel bigger than the Georgian sheriff who stood closer than seemed necessary, "There was a town, only fifteen miles from here. It was pretty untouched, there was lots of stuff left," Abraham turned his gaze to circle the group, "I propose we start there. Get our resources replenished, fortify one of the buildings. It'll give us time to figure out what our next move is," he paused, "And maybe we need a break from all this running around."

Carl glanced at Rosita who turned her face away, but not before a small smile tugged at her lips. He was puzzled for a moment, like he had missed something between the two of them at some point. It didn't matter, Carl turned his attention back to his father. Rick's eyes searched Abraham's face, wandered around the group, fell on his only son.

Carl was careful before indicating his opinion, considering the options they had carefully. First, the option to stay at the church and hope for the best. Maybe erect a fence, fortify it, and keep hunting for food. Eventually, though, the church would fold. It was not built for this era, was not able to be fortified enough. A church was built to let people in rather than keep them out. Second, they could go to this town, this diamond in a pile of coal. Untouched, hardly tapped. A town was much easier to fortify than a single church, much easier to build up. A town could bring life with it. When the risks were weighed against the benefits, the choice was not really much of a choice at all.

Carl gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod of his head. Just once, but it was enough. Rick returned it and turned his terrible stare back to Eugene, bypassing Abraham, "We'll go to the town. We'll figure out what to do when we get there."

Rick punctuated his words by getting closer and closer to Eugene, until he was so close the charlatan had to turn his head away and lean back. Rick paused for a moment, let his rage seep into Eugene's skin, and then turned away. He walked to the back into Father Gabriel's office, his boots landing heavily on the wooden planks. When the door slammed, the crowd jumped in unison, the sudden noise jolting all of them out of their stillness.

Abraham looked around again and held his hands outstretched, "Let's get ready to go, then."

The group moved together, not really sure what they were supposed to do. Dusk was settling, so they all seemed to collectively assume they would go nowhere until the next morning. Quietly, conversation began to strike up in murmurs, eventually blossoming into a full hum. Eugene stood where he had been left, his posture slumped, the air around him reeking of despair.

It was Beth who broke Eugene's stillness, not to anyone's surprise. She placed a gentle hand on his arm and offered him a kind smile, "I could use help with dinner tonight if you want."

He seemed to pull himself back out of a daze and nodded reluctantly, "Yes miss Beth, I would."

Daryl watched her from where he sat, one foot propped up while he ran a knife over a small switch of wood. He let himself smile, just for a moment, before returning to his task. Carol held Judith and talked quietly with Tyreese, Sasha and Maggie busied themselves with taking an inventory and putting packs together. Father Gabriel helped as best he could, but seemed to be mostly in the way.

Carl sat down next to Michonne and stared into the fire, saying nothing. The group gathered slowly, all trying to pretend they were not acutely aware of the door behind which Rick still stood. The feeling of danger seemed to have passed, but the heightened awareness would not. Until Rick returned to the group, everybody would continue to be on edge.

Nobody was quite sure when they fell asleep, it just seemed to have happened. Abraham was the first to wake up, thanks to a gentle shove from Tyreese finishing his watch.

He got to his feet and ran his hands through his hair, blinking away sleep from his eyes. Tyreese remained, staring at him to gauge his state of alertness.

"What do we do now?" Tyreese asked, carrying the implication that Rick had not yet come out from the church office.

It was like a cue had been given and the door opened suddenly, Rick buckling his holster without regard for who he woke up. He stepped loudly and heavily over everyone and spoke loud enough to resonate in the cella, "If we want to make this trip, we better go now. No sense in wasting daylight while we have it."

The group stirred and began to move, a writhing, silent river of bodies zipping up pants, buttoning shirts, loading rifles, and picking up worn knapsacks. It took an hour, more time than Rick would have liked, but they were on the road again.

On the road again, he thought to himself as they moved in silence, passing around a cold can of soup and dried slivers of apple. Moving from place to place, town to town. Nowhere is safe.

Rick shook his head to banish the thought and focused instead on his own feet, one ahead of the other just like he always had when those thoughts passed through his mind.

Reaching the town did not take as long as he had expected, six hours by foot with only a few minor setbacks. They reinforced the same old bookstore for the night, not willing to expend more energy to setup a new base. Tomorrow was for setting up new things, for scavenging and rebuilding. For now, they would enjoy their rest.

It was that night that it happened. The next leg of their journey revealed itself.

Abraham stood at the lone open window with Rick, silent, watching the night move slowly overhead. Only occasionally did a walker make itself known, pausing at the window to scratch or bite at the glass in hopes of soft, fleshy reward. The walker would bore itself and pass, another would not show up for hours. This was a good sign, it meant not many walkers were left in this place. That would make it easy to clear out, easier to fortify.

"Don't keep hating Eugene," Abraham finally said, low and baritone.

"Why not?" Rick hissed, instantly defensive of his unspoken decision to hold Eugene in his ire for the rest of his life, "He's a liar and a fraud, he's a cancer."

Abraham nodded respectfully, "Yeah, but he's handy in his own way. He said it himself, he just...knows things. We could use a guy like that in a place like this."

Rick chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip and stared at his friend, "He needs to be punished. He needs to think he's on eggshells or he will never be useful to us."

"Is that all you think we are" Abraham asked quietly, not accusingly, "just useful?"

Rick sighed and shook his head. It was that shake of his head that brought something to his attention, some small detail that was suddenly out of place. He held up his hand and felt his whole body stiffen, his gaze locking on this tiny little thing. The flash of glass, small, a lens.

Somebody was watching them.

Rick signaled to Abraham who turned his eyes to the spot where the small glimmer of glass had been spotted. It disappeared suddenly, as though it had known it had been spotted. With brazen disregard, they watched a lithe, slender figure dressed in black leap along the close-fitting rooftops of empty businesses. Rick took it in quickly, moving along the windows. He signaled to Abraham to keep watch while he followed the movements of the figure as it leaped, sometimes awkwardly, along the silhouetted skyline.

Eventually he lost sight of it, jogging back to where Abraham watched.

"Did you see it? Where did it go?" It was hard for Rick to keep the frantic out of his tone, but he tried. It had not been so long ago that he butchered another group in the nave of the church, secretly Rick still feared repercussion.

Abraham nodded, but said nothing, staying fixed on the skyline of the town.

"What're we looking at?" Glen said suddenly, leaning his face between them to try and spot whatever it might be.

Rick and Abraham shared a look before they told him, "Someone is watching this place."

Glen's expression fell, tension took over and he tightened his grip on his rifle. He stared out over the roofs searching for the person, "What're we going to do? We can't just leave. Not now, we can't make everyone move around at night."

"They probably know more about this place than we do," it was Carol, listening from the darkness behind Rick. She spoke in a whisper, inciting panic was not on her agenda today, "Leaving at night would be a deathwish, we're better off where we are."

Rick watched her for a moment, rolling options over in his head. Carol acknowledged his transparent gaze, understanding he was not looking at her and rather through her. She moved around them and looked out into the blackness of the night, "We won't get anything done now. We'll keep watch, double up. Tomorrow we can take a look around and maybe get the jump on them before they get it on us."

Rick turned and looked at her, nodding absently. He had come up short, unsure what to do. He was tired and frustrated, unsurprised by this strange new development and yet too exhausted to be truly concerned, "Yeah. Anything you see out of place, you come and you get me. Don't wait, don't think it's too small."

Carol and Glen shared a nod and watched them both disappear behind the shelves. Rick rubbed his forehead and stopped when he reached his sleeping son. Carl stirred when his father lay down beside him and lifted himself up on his elbows.

"Everything okay, dad?"

"Yeah, Carl, it's fine. Just go back to sleep," but it wasn't fine. It was so far from fine Rick couldn't let himself drift off, waiting for the inevitable shake of his night watch team.

But it never came. Carol and Glen saw nothing, no other movement and no one strange figures moving around in the night. Nonetheless, Rick let himself pass his night staring at the blank ceiling without the solace of sleep to wash over him.

Someone was watching them. How long? Why? What did they want?

Questions filtered in and out of his mind powering a wheel that felt as though it would never stop running. It was like sunrise would never come.


	2. Another Long Day

**A/N:** Thank you to everyone who has reviewed or added my story! I'm moving kind of fast, but I choose to believe that is in the spirit of the show :)

**Chapter 2: Another Long Day**

The door to the bookstore creaked open, the nose of a rifle pushed through it followed closely by a lone figure. Rick's hair was too long and too unwashed, but there had not been time to fix such a small problem since before the prison fell. He swept the streets silently, gesturing once he had fully emerged from the doorway. Daryl followed closely, crossbow drawn and aimed, sweeping along behind his leader.

Daryl flicked his eyes from building to building, ignoring a single slow walker. He lowered the bow and spoke over his shoulder, "I don't think they'd be stupid enough to stay where you saw 'em, Rick."

"There's someone in this town," Rick growled, "and I want to know who it is."

Daryl sighed and lifted his crossbow again, covering Rick for another quarter block before gesturing at the bookstore door again. Carol, Maggie, Glen, and Beth stepped out, walking more boldly and calmly. Eyes moved from skyline to windows to rooftops as they followed in Daryl and Rick's wake. Sasha carried Judith, flanked by Carl, Gabriel, and Michonne. Rosita, Tara, Abraham, and Eugene were last and followed suit.

The decision to leave the bookstore had been unanimous once the shadowy figure had been described. Too much had happened for them to try and coexist with an unknown force. Existing alongside a known force had been difficult enough, a mysterious cult of cannibals had been something otherworldly, but a completely unknown entity was not something anyone was willing to endure. Still, some part of them all clung to an unspoken desire to stay, to claim someplace as their own even if it meant imminent danger. Danger was everywhere, what was the point in pretending otherwise?

They moved swiftly down the main street, stopping before the General Store. Beth stepped through the doorway and swept the room with her pistol. She holstered it and opted for a thick hunting knife, crossing it over her wrist with a flashlight. The beam cut through the darkness and bounced around, creating a cluster of shadows on the back wall.

The store had barely been touched, it felt like a relic from a time so lost she hardly recognized it. One walker gurgled and flailed for her, trapped between two shelves a long time ago. Beth sank her knife into its soft, decaying skull and jerked the blade back out, turning confidently to the door.

"It's safe," she whispered. Carl and Maggie walked inside with the packs they had brought from the church.

Shelves were covered in dust, but still full of cans for the most part. It was too risky to weigh themselves down, so they took only what was essential and would not slow the group down.

_Slow us down from where?_ Beth thought as she placed a box of pasta in one of the backpacks. She zipped it and slung it over her shoulder, walking back out through the door. She met Daryl's look with one of pause, consideration. Things had been strange since Beth had come back, they felt irrevocably shifted in some direction she had not quite figured out.

Beth knew Daryl had felt it, too. It showed in the way he looked at her, acted around her. Everything was different now.

"You guys done in there?" He asked, keeping his eyes fixed on her.

Beth nodded, "Whatever won't hold us back."

"Let's get moving," Rick interjected, "Something doesn't feel right."

"You feel that way because of the guy last night," Abraham said, "Stop being paranoid, Rick."

Rick shot him a look, "I want to get us into another building before dark. If we move during the day, It'll be harder for them to keep track of us. Come on."

So they moved, slowly and carefully through the streets until they had almost left the town. There was one building, a tall brick store, that seemed strong enough without needing much reinforcement. Rick opened the door carefully, sticking a knife in two walker skulls before determining the building to be safe. His group flooded in and started to get to work. It was like clockwork now, fortifying a building. They had fallen back into old habits so fast it was like the prison never existed.

As he looked around, Rick saw something else. The passing of planks, the starting of a fire, the setting out of bedrolls. All of it had an air of something other than survival, bigger than staying alive. There was an aura of family everywhere he looked, of togetherness Rick had not managed to feel since the loss of Hershel all those weeks ago.

By the time the old music shop had been built up, it was a little after midday. Tyreese touched Rick's shoulder, "We're gonna set up a lookout on the roof. There's no other high places by this one so we should have a good eye on the town from up there."

Rick nodded, not entirely sure why he had a desire to claim this piece of land as his own. Something primal and dark pushed him to settle here in this quiet place, one of the only relatively safe ones left in the state. Maybe the country? Nobody could be so sure. Despite the verbal decision to leave, he felt the nonverbal decision to stay and try to make a home here.

Late afternoon brought Rick up to the roof where Tyreese sat in a lawn chair he found somewhere downstairs, laughing with Carol who sat next to him. They stopped and Carol lifted her hand in greeting.

"Come sit, Rick. Take a load off," she patted the open ground beside her and he shook his head politely.

"I'd rather not," Rick smiled congenially anyway and stood, surveying the town. It was bigger than he thought, but still so quiet it seemed surreal, like a painting.

"We don't have to stay here, you know," Tyreese was standing next to him, speaking coolly in that relaxed way he had, "We can find another town somewhere else."

Everybody was feeling the tension of it all, the never ending spiral of adversity that seemed to plague them day in and day out. They needed this town. That was why everybody acted against the decision to leave without even thinking about it. Somebody would have to fight for peace, who better than all of them?

Night fell slowly on the buzzing conversation downstairs, the roof was silent enough to hear the occasional laugh and murmur. Tyreese and Carol got to their feet and Carol brushed dirt off her pants. She looked over at Rick who hadn't moved all afternoon.

"We're going to send up the first night watch. You coming down?" Her tone was level and considerate, she knew how to weave her way through his sullen silence and elicit a response.

Rick hesitated before he responded, placing hands on his hips. He glanced back at her and took a last look at the buildings on the horizon, "Yeah, I'm coming."

Glen and Maggie passed them on their way up the stairs and offered Rick a kind smile. Maggie reached out and touched Rick's arm, "We'll tell you if we see anything."

He searched her face for a moment and nodded, "Don't think anything is too small. Wake me up if you have to, don't keep it to yourselves."

Carl looked up and grinned at his father when he stepped into the room, "Beans?"

Rick rejected the offered can with a hand, "You eat it."

His son rolled his eyes, "You gotta eat, too, dad."

Reluctantly, Rick took the can and metal fork, surprising himself with his hunger. The can was devoured in a matter of seconds and he found himself selfishly wanting more. He cast the thought out by looking at his son's face, broad with a smile as Carl listened to a story Michonne was leaned in to share.

They sat around the small makeshift fire trying to one-up funny stories about the world before, silly things people concerned themselves with before the disease took over. It was two or three hours after dark that Glen came rushing down the stairs, tossing a metal lid over the trashcan fire.

The desperate motion brought everyone quickly to their feet and hands to their guns, all crowding the door and windows on the front of the building. The light was extinguished quickly and the room went pitch black. So much time without electric lights allowed their eyes to adjust faster to that blackness.

Glen pushed himself up close to Rick and whispered quickly, "People in the streets. Three of them. They're just walking, I don't think they know we're here."

"Where's Maggie?" Rick asked, more concerned with the missing member of his patchwork family than the imminent threat of danger.

The question made Glen smile in spite of the fear, always touched by Rick's devotion to his people over anything else, "On the roof keeping watch. She'll come warn us if more of them show up."

"Good," Rick said, turning his focus to a break in the boards they had fastened to the windows.

Three men were walking slowly through the streets, carrying an unintelligible conversation. They were a quarter mile or so from the store, rifles strapped across their backs and knives in their belts or strapped to their thighs. Though it was dark, Rick had learned what shapes to look for on a person.

Tara leaned back and whispered to Rick, "We can take them. There's three of them and a lot more of us."

"No," he hissed, "Not unless they come at us first. Glen doesn't think they know we're here."

The group stopped up the street a little and turned away from the end of the road. Three men, varying in age, stood muttering and turned their backs on the building. Rick took this chance. He signaled to Abraham who propped his rifle against his shoulder and covered Rick as he opened the door slowly. Daryl followed him with his crossbow up, silent on the paper strewn streets in the night. Glen was at their back, tailed by Rosita with her handgun drawn.

The trio was unsuspecting in the night as the four gunmen crept up on them, one of them even threw back his head with a loud and surprising laugh. Finally, the youngest of the three men spotted Glen and gave a shout of alarm.

"Hey!"

There was a click and slide of three guns rapidly drawn and a sudden flurry of shouting that filled the streets. There was little fear of walkers here, so few had been spotted since the firehouse.

Rick's shout overtook the three men and he did not need to turn to feel the presence of his group behind him. Maggie would stick to the roof, Carol and Sasha would be facing down the other direction in case more came from the back. Carl would remain inside and stand guard by his sister's side. Everybody had a place and a purpose.

"Hey, hey!" Rick shouted, "Who are you?!"

"Who are we?" the older man shouted back, "Who are _you_?!"

There was a sudden unintelligible shouting again and the click of hammers. Rick shouted at them again, "You're outnumbered, shooting at any of us won't end well for you. Now tell me who you are!"

Silence, an exchange of stressed glances. Suddenly, there was a fourth voice, a fourth person pushing themselves past the three strangers standing in the middle of the street. Rick did not know where the person had come from, nobody did. There was no preceding movement in the darkness that indicated where their fourth person had emerged from.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" a woman's voice, "What's this? Grow up, put your guns down."

The woman that pushed herself into the no man's land between Rick's group and the trio of men was surprisingly young and surprisingly short. She was petite, but carried a muscular frame that came with surviving in this world now. The one thing the young woman lacked was telltale signs of malnutrition. Most people were skeletal, but not her.

_Come to think of it,_ Rick thought, _none of them are, __they're well fed_.

The woman looked from what he assumed were her people back to Rick's and lifted her hands slowly. In one, she held a gun and in the other a long, terrifying hunting knife, "Put your guns _down_."

She looked at the four people who were closing in on them and slowly, deliberately put her handgun in its holster at her hip. She slid the knife in the leather cover on her other side and kept her hands up, turning to face them, "We don't want any trouble. We came here for supplies, that's it."

"Who are you?" Rick growled again, loudly and directly at the woman. The darkness made it difficult to tell what she looked like, but he could tell she was focused on him now.

"Gwen," she said clearly, honing in on Rick when she decided he must be the leader, "The little guy is Eustace, Kevin in the middle here, and Lyal is our old wise man."

It was meant to be a joke, something to lighten the tension, but it fell flat in the stale air around them. Gwen stood, hands raised, and waited on Rick to show her what she should do next. She was not scared, not anymore at least. In this day and age, if someone wanted to shoot you then they wouldn't ask your name first.

Finally, Rick lowered the magnum and motioned at his people to do the same, "This is our town. Find a new place to look for supplies."

"With all due respect," Gwen's tone did not imply respect at all, but she offered he sentiment anyway, "We've been in and out of his place getting stuff for almost a year. This isn't your town."

Rick stepped towards her and tightened his grip on the gun, not quite putting his finger on the trigger. He did not have the intention of shooting her, but he did have the intention of scaring her, "I'm not gonna say it again. Find. Another. Place."

To his surprise, Gwen did not back away like he had become accustomed to. Maybe it was more unsettling that he had become used to people submitting to him, maybe it was because now a stranger didn't.

"Who are _you_, first? And your people. I introduced mine," she gesture to the men who had dropped their rifles back over their shoulders, "it's only polite for you to do the same."

There was nothing threatening in her tone, just matter-of-fact. Somehow, it made Rick relax a little and ease his white knuckled grip on the magnum's handle. He glanced over his shoulder at his people, all of them had lowered their guns three quarters of the way down. He met Glen's face and caught the nod from his friend despite he thick, oppressive darkness.

"Rick Grimes," he said quietly, still not willing to trust anyone after everything they had been though, "Those are my people, but you don't need to know them. You only need to know me."

Gwen smiled and slowly held out her hand, which only made him more anxious, "Pleasure, Rick Grimes."

He looked down at her hand and back to her face, scowling, "You need to leave."

She nodded and withdrew her hand, turning to her people, "You heard the man. Let's move out, we can find another place." She turned her gaze back to him and, though it was dark, he could make out something he had not seen in this world for a long time. Disappointment.

Rick started to turn and head back the way he came, but Daryl moved to block his way, "Coming for supplies means they could have a camp."

"The last time we went to someone else's camp, we almost became their supplies," Rick met Daryl's thoughtful stare with a hard one, "I won't kill people if they don't give me a reason to, but that doesn't mean I want anything to do with them."

Daryl didn't let him go by just yet, choosing instead to put a hand on his friend's shoulder, "I don't think they were spyin' on us because they wanted our stuff. It would've been easier to get it that night when we weren't prepared."

"Then why were they spying on us?" Rick intended it to be rhetorical, no other possibility for such a threatening action had occurred to him.

"I think they were watching the town," Daryl looked up towards the four strangers who stood silently, waiting for the crowd to allow them passage back down the road, "I don't think they're up to no good here. We could use some help if we can get it."

"I'm not risking our people again." His statement was final and he nodded to his group to allow them passage.

The woman stared at Rick as she moved past, falling back as her companions walked down the unlit street. Someone had uncovered the fire again, probably Carl, and now that they were aware of Rick's people it seemed stupid that they had not noticed the flickering orange glow earlier.

Gwen took a few careful steps back towards Rick and unslung a pack from her shoulder. She handed it to him carefully, "It's got some medical supplies in it, food, and a couple of bottles' worth of clean water."

Rick stared past the peace offering at her and did not move to take it. Instead, Daryl accepted it and lifted the strap back at her in thanks, "Appreciated."

"If you run into trouble, run that way down the road," she pointed past the brick music store towards the dense treeline at the edge of town, "and stop at a big oak with a white rag tied around it. We have people who patrol regularly, they'll find you and help you out if you need it."

It was the offer of help that made Rick boil, the hair on his neck stand up. He could not manage to keep the fury out of his voice, "Nobody helps anybody, not anymore. Not for free."

Something about the false notion of possible safety grated against every fiber of his being, but that did not seem to bother the woman. Instead, he thought he could make out the faint outline of a smile, "We do."

She did not give him the opportunity to respond, but turned on her heel and trotted back to her group. She was careful as she passed his people, offering a nod to Rosita and a peaceable raise of her hand to Maggie on the roof. Gwen had noticed Maggie during her altercation with Rick, decided to offer the kind gesture, and immediately regretted it. She could feel the sudden jolt of tension again in the air. Her friendly gesture came across as threatening.

Carl peered out from behind the door and Gwen watched him for a moment. It had been a long time since they came across a group with a younger member than Eustace. Her stare bloomed into a slow smile across her face and she lifted three fingers in a greeting as she passed.

Carl returned it and her smile, looking across the road at his father. Rick watched the four strangers with his shoulders raised like a dog before it attacked. He frowned and narrowed his eyes, chasing his dad as he came back inside.

"They weren't going to hurt us," Carl said plainly, "or if they were, they would have done it."

"I'm not going to talk about this with you," Rick pushed past his son and circled the small fire. He rested his hands on his hips and watched his people filter back inside.

Tara closed the door and turned to him, "What if they really could help us?"

"They can't," he replied flatly, "Nobody can. This world isn't made for people to help each other."

Carl kept himself silent and glared into the fire. He hated when Rick spoke like this, took the pessimistic road over the optimistic. His father always saw the bad in people, never the good even when it was staring him in the face. Did the woman not just freely give up supplies? Precious medical supplies? That was the equivalent of a chest full of gold and she had just handed it to them like it was nothing. Someone who wanted to kill you did not just give you a means to save yourself and walk away without asking for anything.

Michonne laid a hand on his shoulder and shook her head at him. _Don't push this,_ was her unspoken statement, _let it go. Trust him._

Daryl slumped down hard on the floor and unzipped the pack, Beth crouched by his side. He started taking an inventory of what they were given, "Gauze, aspirin, couple cans of food, tweezers," he pursed his lips and looked up at Rick. "She gave us a gold mine."

Beth pulled a container out of the bag and tried to suppress her elation. "Formula," she beamed at Daryl and then turned her expression to Rick, "She gave us formula."

Michonne turned to Beth with a puzzled look on her face and reached down to look at the sealed tub of organic powder, "Why would she need formula?"

Rick stared at the container and frowned. Something was not right, but it did not feel wrong either. It felt perplexing, like he did not quite have a handle on what was going on. Rick hated that feeling


	3. It's A Long Road

**Chapter 3: It's A Long Road**

Beth froze when she heard the sound the next morning: a light rapping on the door. Too methodical to be a branch in the wind, it had to be a person. She glanced up at Daryl and got to her feet slowly, sliding her hunting knife out of its sheath. Daryl leveled his bow at the door and heard Abraham's palm close around his AK-47. Rick was standing in the doorway to the back room and pressed himself against the doorframe, in case someone decided to come through the back door.

Beth closed her palm around the doorknob, letting the whole situation feel awkward and foreign while she twisted it. Two years ago, a knock on the door would have been met with pleasantries and offerings of water or something to eat. Now, though, it was met with a chorus of guns and knives. She pulled slightly on the door, but it did not give under her hand. So she pulled it again, harder, and the door made an scraping sound against the frame.

Gwen stood outside in the soft light of mid-morning. At least, Beth assumed it was the woman from last night. It had been too dark to make out anything about her so Beth decided to just assume.

"Yeah?" she asked, letting herself relax. Something about the young woman was hardly threatening, it even made her feel at ease.

"I brought you these," Gwen held up a string on which three rabbits hung, "We have extra. I thought you could use some."

The whole situation was puzzling. Nobody just offered up food, nobody just offered up help, and nobody just gave up supplies. Everything had a price on it, Beth had learned that plainly from her stay at the hospital. She did not know how to respond, what the polite way to refuse something like this was. She would be lying if she said she was not enticed by the prospect of rabbit for lunch.

"Take 'em," Gwen thrust them through the doorway at her, "I don't want anything in return, just take them."

Finally, Beth pulled the door open and let light pour into the musty room. It made everyone blink for a moment and shield their eyes, unaccustomed to the light yet. Footsteps pattered down the stairs and the door to the roof access opened up, Carl stumbling out into the room.

He paused, seeing the door open, and his mission felt superfluous now. Carl had waited a few moments to decide if he should warn the group or not, but the woman was alone and there was no suggestion that she had friends waiting in the woods. His delay had resulted in her visitation.

Rick let his eyes focus and stared hard at the woman in the doorway. Now he finally had a good look at her. Gwen was short, maybe an half inch taller than Beth, with skin that was pale without being pasty, a foreign characteristic since the outbreak had pushed everyone outdoors more often. Her hair was a very light brown that could have passed for dark blond if she wanted, streaked with almost unnoticeable highlighting that accompanied being in the sunshine for long periods of time. She had pulled it back with an elastic in a messy, haphazard bun, but a few stray sections revealed it to be slightly wavy if she were to let it down. A faded red bandana was tied around her head like a headband, recently trimmed bangs swept over her forehead and down to frame her face. Her face was ovular with gentle features, like a Botticelli painting might be, and her eyes were a blue so pale they washed out in the early morning light behind her. Rick would not put her at any older than twenty-five. A tan shirt may have once been white, but that was a long time ago. She wore long, dark jeans that looked just a little too long for her and covered the tops of thick, sensible work boots. Her holster for her handgun rested on her hips, not enough notches left to tie it securely around her waist.

It was Gwen's arms that gave Rick pause. Two thick scars marred her skin along the forearm, a light shade of pink that meant they could not be more than a year old. They were long and jagged, like something had almost torn her arm off. Obviously not a bite or a scratch, or she would not be standing in front of them right now.

He moved his eyes back up to her face and let himself admit something he had not done in a long time: Gwen was pretty.

She broke the awkward silence by holding out the rabbits again, "Here."

Daryl took the twine from her and said nothing, dropping his crossbow over his shoulder again and heading to the small employee kitchen in the back. The building was once a music store that doubled as a residence, the second floor had a bedroom and a bathroom which the group had decided belonged to Glen and Maggie. They were the only real couple here, Rosita and Abraham did not really care about privacy and had disbanded the notion of it a long time ago. He draped the bounty on the small island counter and began to skin them, careful to try and keep the fur in tact. It would be useful in the winter to line boots with or make a blanket for Judith.

"Thanks," Beth said, giving her an awkward smile.

Gwen returned it, but did not make any move to leave yet. It was painful to watch, nobody knew how to interact with anyone anymore. She finally took a step inside, her boot landing hard on the floor.

Rick had put his gun away, but now let his hand fly to its handle, "That's far enough."

She held up her hands defensively and nodded, "Okay, okay. I thought coming inside was better than waiting outside."

"Not coming at all would have been best," his tone was hard, rude, and cold.

"Dad," Carl hissed, narrowing his eyes to suit his disapproving expression, "She brought us food. The least you can do is say thanks."

Rick hesitated, staring at his son. He was torn between a desire to reprimand Carl for undermining him in front of this woman and acknowledging Carl was right and he was being rude. Rick chose the latter option, hoping to appease Carl's wrath.

"Thank you." It was curt and short, but more than Gwen had expected.

"I have a camp down the road a ways," she jerked her thumb over her shoulder, "we come here to restock on things we can't make there. I know you told us to leave it alone, but I don't think that's something we can do quite yet."

"Why not?" Rick spat.

"We haven't found another town like this yet. Until we do, we have to keep coming here to get a few things. Nothing big, we won't be in the way, we just can't abandon the place all together quite yet," Gwen's tone was calm, she was keeping her head level while she stepped into a lion's den. It was a basket of serpents and she an exposed hand, but they would never trust her otherwise.

"We appreciate it," Carol said kindly, though her hand on her knife hilt betrayed her, "Thanks for the rabbits, and letting us know."

Gwen nodded, "I'm Gwen Rowe. While we search out a new place to look for supplies, we can help you guys out. We've got access to food and a few things, but what we can't grow we find."

"We," Michonne reflected the word back to her with consideration, letting it hang in the air not like a question, but like an observation, "Who is 'we'?"

"My group. Well," Gwen laughed a little nervously. The emotion felt odd coming from her, "More than a group, really. We're too big to be called that anymore."

"How many?" Michonne asked.

Gwen shrugged and did a quick calculation in her head, "Fifty, maybe. Probably more. We had some people come join us a few nights ago and a couple last night."

Maggie's eyes went wide and she felt shock for a moment, "Fifty?" she repeated, "Fifty people?"

Gwen shrugged again and nodded.

"Where do you keep them all?" Carl said, both curious and skeptical. He felt like he was listening to someone describe what reaching nirvana felt like.

"We cleared out another town like this. We've got walls and supplies, some rabbit hutches, gardens, chickens," she let the words sink in a little, trying and failing to hide her proud smile, "We always need people."

"Slaves," Rick said from the doorway, "You need slaves."

Gwen narrowed her eyes at him and shook her head, "No. Not like slaves. Like people, like a community. We work together, everybody has a job and everybody reaps the rewards."

"What you're talking about doesn't exist anymore," Rick had started to walk towards her, "If you think you can make us all walk into some trap, you'd best think again."

She stared up at him, defiant, "It's not a trap." Her tone was bold, authoritative like it had been the previous night. Somehow, her voice overtook his and devoured his words as they reached her.

"No offense, lady," Glen said, fidgeting with the butt of his rifle when he spoke, "but we've been through hell and high water and it's always been a trap."

Gwen looked around the room and considered them all, her hand balled into a fist. She was not angry they did not believe her, she was offended.

Daryl broke the tension by placing the skinned carcasses over the metal hangers that made up the grill over their fire. The flame was low now, not necessary in the spring and yet too essential to get rid of. Nevertheless, the rabbits sizzled as they hit the metal and the air was rapidly filled with the warm smell of cooking meat.

Despite himself, Rick felt his mouth water. It broke his concentration and he took a step back, "Look. We appreciate your help, but we don't need it."

Father Gabriel had watched the group interact with this woman, gauged her intentions, and monitored her reactions to their words. He may have been a cowardly man, inept at fighting, but he was a judge of character they had never met before. It was a combination of the seminary training and his constant interaction with people in his small Georgia town that gave him this ability. He took a step forward and placed a hand on Rick's shoulder, one on Gwen's elbow.

"We shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, Rick. She did us a favor today and isn't asking anything in return," Gabriel kept his tone gentle, placating, "We should focus on our blessings. It's been a long time since we've enjoyed something like this."

It was Gabriel's sincerity that broke Rick's shield of anger, making his shoulders fall out of their attack position. He looked at Gwen again and considered her. She was not asking for anything, she had come alone, she had given them a peace offering, and they had not been attacked in the night. His survival instincts warned him not to trust anyone who was not a part of his group, but his human instincts told him he was being silly and if she could have hurt him then she would have.

"Thank you," there was more sincerity in his voice this time, "We appreciate what you've done for us."

Gwen nodded and folded her arms across her chest, "I know I sound like I'm talking crazy, but we really do have a camp. A colony is a better term for it, we've cleared out houses and put up walls. You'd all be welcome if you wanted."

"Thank you, but no thank you," Rick fought against his urge to be upset at her tantalizing gift of hope, "We're going to try and clear this place out, stay a while, and then be on our way."

"You don't have to be," her tone was softer, the kindness in it startled him, "I'll come back in a week. If you're still here, I'll offer you the chance again."

Rick nodded politely, but had no intention of changing his mind, "So you'll be on your way then?"

"No," she shook her head, "I need to pick up a few things from the pharmacy a few blocks over. Then I'll be gone."

"Good-" Rick started to say.

"I'll go with you," Maggie interrupted, "We could use a few things, too."

"You're not going alone," Glen stepped towards her and could not stop the wary look he gave Gwen, "I'll go, too."

Rick sighed and looked from Maggie to Glen and nodded, "Alright, just be careful."

It made him uneasy, sending two of his best people out with a stranger. Nobody had seen anyone else, but it did not mean she had really come alone. Still, they could not afford to be without medical supplies. So he let them go past, watched them walking a few paces behind the strange young woman and then disappear around the corner.

Maggie held her finger on the safety and stared at the side of Gwen's face. They were silent and the young woman walked with her eyes on her feet, "Do you come into town a lot?"

Gwen shook her head, "No, we just had a big group come in and they were pretty banged up. For all our resources, we can't produce that many bandages at a moment's notice. So we come into town to supplement what we make."

Maggie nodded and considered her next statement, "Do you really have a place? With walls?"

Gwen nodded and smiled, "We do. We'd take you in if you wanted. There's no pressure though."

Glen shifted uncomfortably and introduced himself without extending his hand, "I'm Glen, this is Maggie." It was an attempt to change the subject.

"Nice to meet you both," she surveyed Glen in her peripheral vision, trying to see him without being too obvious, "If you guys want to come, just wait by that tree I told you about if you don't come with me. Someone will be there to get you in a few hours, we are always sending guys out there."

"You're pretty free with information about your place," Maggie said bluntly, "Aren't you afraid?"

Something passed over Gwen's face, not quite dark, but more along the lines of sadness. She nodded, "Yeah, but the colony trusts my judgement."

"And you think we'd keep your secret?"

"I think you have nothing to gain by trying to attack us," her lips curved up into a sly smile, "Somebody looking to set up a town of their own doesn't strike me as someone looking to do battle."

Her tone was light and casual when she said the word, it was almost eerie to hear out of her. Maggie smiled congenially anyway and made no effort to revitalize the conversation. The pharmacy loomed in front of them, a window-eyed beast with a mouth full of shattered glass for teeth. Gwen slid her long knife from its sheath and Glen had a moment to look at it. It was like something out of a science fiction movie, slightly curved with a notch taken out of one side.

The store was quiet, but Glen cocked his head and caught a shuffling noise. He gestured to Maggie and Gwen to stay quiet while he moved ahead of them through the window and down one of the aisles. A single walker shuffled down the hallway at him and Glen pushed it away, stabbing it in the head. He signaled the all clear and the women followed him inside.

Gwen bee lined for one of the shelves in the back and started selecting products. Maggie looked around, wandering slowly. Everything was still intact. Normally the pharmacy was the first thing to be raided, but not in a sleepy little town like this. Come to think of it, where were they?

A small keychain still on the rack read _Peterson, GA_. Maggie smiled and pocketed the trinket. She looked around, Gwen was down the aisle from her and Glen a few rows over. The door to the back, where all the medications were, was closed. Curious why Gwen had chosen the generics over the powerful stuff, she put her hand on hand on the door and started to push down on the handle.

"Maggie, NO!" Gwen screamed and threw herself down the rest of the aisle.

Walkers surged against the door and it fell open in front of her. Maggie did not scream, she had learned better, but she struggled to push them back and close the door. Gwen was on top of the walkers, plunging her knife into the backs of heads and pushing, heaving against the door with Maggie doing her best to push back.

It happened in only a few seconds, Glen launched himself over a upturned shelf and pushed alongside Gwen and Maggie. Gwen let out an audible cry of effort and looked at her companions, "Can you hold it?"

"Why?" Glen strained back, slicing at a flaling arm.

"If you can hold it long enough, I can try to get a few of them and buy you time. Three of us can take 'em," Gwen looked at them hopefully.

Maggie and Glen exchanged glances, neither seeing a better option, and agreed.

"There are only ten or eleven of them back there. I can get three or four before you guys just let the door open," Gwen backed away and let the door open slightly. Heads popped out, decayed and riddled with maggots.

Everything I'm the room started to smell of rot. It was a smell one got accustomed to rather quickly and it did not bother any of them. Gwen stopped thinking and just moved, arcing her knife down as many times as possible any time a new head popped into view. She plunged the blade in and pulled it back out with a sickening crunch, wet slurping sounds followed every retrieval. She felt old, dead blood on her hands and tried to ignore the thick, sticky substance.

Glen and Maggie let the door fall open and joined her in the slaughter, whipping knives over and over again into decaying bone. By the time Gwen pulled her knife out for the last time, her chest was heaving, she was sweating, and covered with viscous blackish liquid. She slumped back against one of the standing shelved and wiped an arm over her forehead.

Glen stared down at the pile of dead walkers and looked back up at Gwen, "You knew they were in there?"

"I didn't think you guys would open the door," she gasped, "I forgot, it's been so long."

"Why didn't you say anything?!" He did not even try to suppress his rage, "You didn't warn up?!"

"I forgot!" She snapped back, matching his raised voice, "We shoved them in there months ago, you think my first thought would be, 'Hey better warn these people not to open doors without a measure of caution'?!"

Glen seethed with anger, Maggie's hand was in his shoulder, "It's okay, Glen. Everybody's fine, that's what's matters."

He nodded and sighed, grasping her hand and kissing her, "I just didn't expect it."

"Me neither." She ran a hand over his face. "But we're all okay."

Gwen frowned and stared at her bag, "We should get you back to your group before Rick rips my head off."

Her voice was sour in her mouth. Gwen was annoyed with herself for being so forgetful, they were right to hate her. She started to walk away and felt a hand on her arm. Maggie looked at her and willed sincerity into her eyes.

"Thank you for helping me."

Gwen offered a half smile and nodded, "Thank you for not hating me."

They walked back to the music store in silence. Gwen quietly beat herself up, Maggie watched the streets, and Glen focused in calming himself down. He knew Maggie was right, it was not anyone's fault. Being mad at Gwen for the walkers was stupid. Still, it was hard not to blame someone for what just happened.

Abraham opened the door before they reached the building and fixed his calculating stare on the young woman. She waited until Glen and Maggie were back inside before looking up to the roof. Rick stood with a middle aged woman peering over the ledge at her. To offer a kindly wave felt futile, but she did it anyway. The older woman returned it, but Rick kept his cold, suspicious glare focused on her.

Gwen sighed and wiped an arm across her forehead, heading back down the road to her community. Back to the fortress she called home.


	4. The Other Side of the Rabbit Hole

**A/N:** This chapter is a bit long, but I felt it had to be. Yeah, I could have cut it into two, but I felt like it might lose its force if I did it that way. Sorry to stuff so much reading in your faces!

**Chapter 4: The Other Side of the Rabbit Hole**

Abraham closed the door and stared across the fire at Rick. The former sheriff placed his hands on his hips and looked around the circle. There was a feeling of reluctant acceptance permeating the air, every face he saw looked absently at the ground or sullenly at the floor. Maggie leaned on Glenn's shoulder and stared past him at the closed door. Nobody spoke for a few minutes.

"So are we staying here?" Sasha asked, mimicking Rick's stance, "Are we clearing out this town, putting our own walls up, what?"

Rick sighed and stared into the fire, considering his next statement carefully, "What do you want to do?"

The appeal to democracy turned heads, brought about an electric alertness that stifled the pitiable acceptance. It had been a long time since Rick appealed to the group to decide anything. There had been a constant fluctuation of power with Rick wanting to leave the decision in someone else's hands, but a periodic refusal of everyone to do anything without his approval. Now, it seemed, his people were responding to an opportunity to help decide their next step. Everything had been riding on Eugene, who Rick could not help but give a spiteful glance towards, but now that was over and those hopes had been buried. Something else had been buried along with it, though: hope for some kind of future.

"I've been your leader and I've been your follower. I've watched us survive a plague, a tank, cannibals, and a hospital. We've all had our hopes crushed and our spirits lifted. Maybe a few months ago I should have been the one to choose, but it's not a few months ago. It's now," Rick paused, "We could have a future in this town. We could try to finish what we started back at the prison. Bring people in, find a way to build some walls, make it safe. I think we could stand a chance here."

Right now their choices were limited. Without the offer from the woman, it stood that they could either stay here or keep walking until something else came along.

But what if nothing did? What if this _was_ their something else?

" But I'm not sure all of you feel that way. So I think we should put it to a vote," he took in every face that looked at him now, all a picture of surprise, "Right now we're sitting on our asses with nothing to do. We don't have a goal or a destination, we're just sitting around. I don't want that for us, I want us to find a place that's ours."

Rick looked around the room and let his words sink in, "So we have a few choices. Stay, make this town ours, survive here. Gwen said they'd leave us alone here if we wanted it," he held up his index finger and then flicked up his middle finger alongside it, "Keep going, find somewhere new, keep moving," Rick stuck out his thumb and added it to the options, "Follow that woman and take a chance on whatever she's offering."

"You don't believe she's offering anything," Carl said, carefully gauging his father's expression. It was always hard to tell what was going on in Rick's mind.

"But you do," Rick said, "And if we are gonna survive, we _all_ have to make a decision together. Not just me," a long pause gave his words a dramatic effect, "So. What's it gonna be?"

Glances were exchanged, unspoken decisions were made, and it took everyone ultimately ten minutes to settle on their independent decisions. Rick gave a careful nod to acknowledge the expression of finality on everyone's faces before continuing.

"Stay here, carry on," Rick lifted his hand, Eugene was his unexpected second, but no one else.

"Keep going, find somewhere new," it was plain this option was not preferred, no votes.

Rick struggled for a moment to state their third option, his survivor's paranoia making it the most dubious, "Take up Gwen's offer."

Practically unanimous. He tried not to be taken aback, but Rick could not help himself. He was surprised that Abraham and Rosita had chosen this option, they never struck him as people who would count on some stranger's probably empty promises. He gave everyone a moment to consider their stance, maybe retract their vote in favor of the first option. No one did.

Rick nodded again, more for himself than an acknowledgement of their decision.

Glenn spoke up when he noticed the apprehension in Rick's face, "When we were at the prison," he said carefully, "we brought people in, people off the street, travellers, people without a home. We brought them in with us, talked to them along the way, gave them the chance to be a part of something bigger."

"We did," Rick said, curious where Glenn was going with it.

"What she's doing is exactly what we did. There's no more danger in getting into her car than there was getting into ours. Every person we picked up could have been a threat, could have ruined what we had, but they didn't," Glenn stared firmly at Rick, "We went to Terminus because we didn't have a choice. We were scattered and nobody knew where to go, only that we would all seek out a sanctuary if we could find one. We did, we sought one out. It didn't turn out how we wanted, but we all knew finding a sanctuary was what we all really wanted." Glenn laughed slightly at his own words, a moment ago he had been annoyed at Gwen and it took the options in front of his face to put that annoyance aside, "We all still want that."

Maggie nodded, Beth met her gaze with a smile, "Glenn's right," Beth said, "What we had at the prison was our sanctuary, we should give someone else's a chance."

Father Gabriel held his fist to his lips thoughtfully, scanning everyone sitting and standing around the front entrance to the dusty old music store, "I wasn't with you at the prison, I didn't get to know any sort of utopia like that, but I had my church. It was my safe place, where I was always going to be okay. I would like to have that again."

The muscles on Rick's jaw tightened a little and Carl recognized the movement for what it was. Not an expression of frustration or anger, but the expression Rick had when he knew someone else was right. Fighting a smile was almost impossible, but Carl managed it. Everyone was always so careful with Rick since his breakdown, but Carl did not have to be. It was refreshing to see that they were all starting to realize they did not have to be either.

Rick nodded pointedly at the three speakers, "It's settled then. We'll pack up and head out in the morning."

'Regular patrols at the tree,' Gwen had said. Rick still was neither convinced nor entirely comfortable with this decision, but if he wanted to keep his people together then it had to be made. Nevertheless, he felt sick with uneasiness.

It was the noise around him that woke Carl, the shuffle of people getting ready. Dawn had not yet broken, he could tell from the lack of grayish light through the boards, but everyone was already awake and gathering their things together. It never took that long, an hour at most. For fifteen people and a baby, that was fairly impressive. Carl could feel it all around him, a charged sensation of mixed excitement, anticipation, and unease. It was the feeling of something new that pushed any remaining tiredness from his mind. This was going to be different, the promise of change ached in his bones. Carl just knew it would be better.

Carol reached out and touched Rick's shoulder while he packed, careful not to startle him, "You made the right decision."

Rick sighed and stared at his things, "You won't be saying that when this turns into a nightmare."

"I don't think it will," Carol offered him a kind smile, "but if it does, we'll do whatever we need to do to stay alive. I think this is what we need to do, it's how we're gonna survive."

Carol, always the survivalist. If anyone was made for this world, it was her. The thought made Rick break a smile. Satisfied, she went back to check on Tyreese and baby Judith. Beth crouched to zip up her bag and stared at it, not exactly thrilled about hoisting it over her shoulder again. Suddenly, Daryl reached down and took the strap, handing her his in return.

"Your's is heavier than mine," he said roughly, "I'll carry it a while."

"I can handle it," Beth was almost offended. All her life people had treated her like she was fragile, just once she wanted someone to treat her like she really was. She snatched his lighter pack from him anyways, having learned it was easier to just do something than to spend time arguing about it.

"I know," Daryl's expression was sincere, the sincerity was carried through him into his words, "But we make a better team, remember? I'll trade you once we rest a while."

Something about what he said made Beth smile, washing out her irritation. She nodded and touched his arm gently, turning away to make sure Glenn and Maggie were ready to go. Though she did not see it, she could feel him watching her leave.

Rick surveyed the tired, hungry, tattered group in front of him and made a mental note of every one of their faces. This was his family, these were his friends, and he would make sure they survived no matter what was about to happen. Rick nodded at Abraham and the door swung open, the soft gray horizon just beginning to fade into early dawn light.

They filed out the door in pairs, weapons drawn and covering one another as they left. Nothing felt wrong, but terror always seemed to strike the moment any of them ever began to relax. Carl hung back with his dad and scanned the trees down the road.

"You think there's really a tree?" he asked, hopeful.

"I don't know." Rick whispered, keeping his eyes roaming over the streets around them. The entire town was silent and empty, a feature which would have made it eerie in any other context. Instead, the silence made it feel more safe than it probably should.

The road they walked on was cracked asphalt, only a small number of old cars driven off to the side of the road - or were they moved? A small band of walkers made for them early on, but it had been so long and the corpses so dessicated that they only ever seemed to be a challenge when they had the jump on someone or a horde passed through. The walk was silent, the only sound crunching leaves and the occasional chirping bird. Though it was early spring, the ground was still covered in dead foliage with nobody to clear it away.

There were some houses speckling the roadside, too, but they looked gutted and empty. One walker made its way down the stairs at an inconsequential pace, but Sasha jogged over to stab it anyway. There was no sense in not being overly cautious, especially venturing into completely unknown territory.

Finally, Michonne spotted the tree. She nudged Carl and let him make the exclamation of discovery. It made her feel a sense of togetherness when she got to make these little sacrifices. After all, nothing was about glory anymore these days.

The oak was exactly as Gwen had described, ancient and enormous. It was sitting in the middle of what was once a well-kept brick cul-de-sac style park. Two wood and iron benches were placed on either side under old looking streetlamps, long since dark. Strips of white cloth had been tied everywhere on the tree like white Spanish moss, it was a sight to behold in itself. In its heyday, the park was probably spotless and well-kept, frequented by inhabitants of the little Georgia town. Now, it was both beautiful and terrifying.

Rick felt his hair on the back of his neck stand up and he slid his magnum out of its holster, "Be careful."

His words were a harsh whisper on the quiet air, but they seemed to be a boom in the stillness of the area. Sasha circled the tree, Michonne kept her hand on her katana's hilt, and Daryl stalked the perimeter with his crossbow ready to aim.

Carl couldn't help himself, he jogged up to the tree and stared into its branches, all ridden with strips of white cloth. He looked back at his father and smiled, "See? She told the truth about it."

"We'll see, alright," Rick muttered to himself, but in this kind of quiet nothing was ever really muttered to oneself anymore. He kept an eye on everything around them, staring into the suburban version of a forest. It was not densely wooded, but there were enough trees between the park and the house that must lay beyond it to obscure the buildings.

By the sunlight overhead, Abraham guessed it was probably eight thirty in the morning. They had walked about four miles to get to this tree and it was a straight shot back to Peterson if they needed to get out of sight. An escape plan was never a bad thing to have.

It felt like hours had passed, so much time that a few people were beginning to think nobody was coming. With perfect timing, Daryl signaled to a space in the trees that looked deliberate, like the opening to a path. People. He was hearing the sound of people talking.

They weren't doing anything to keep themselves quiet. Someone was laughing loudly and recounting some story at a volume most of Rick's group had not heard in a long time. Another person responded in a lower tone, but occasionally let out a booming laugh. From their noise, there were only two of them. Finally, there was a rustling noise and a crunching of dried plants.

Rick pulled the hammer back on his gun and held it up, keeping the nose down just in case. Daryl pointed his crossbow, Michonne drew her sword, Abraham and Rosita pointed handguns. Knives were drawn by anyone who did not hold a firearm, but other than that they had enough firepower to take out whatever was coming at them now ten times over.

Two men emerged from the makeshift path, one of them they recognized as Lyal from the night before based on his stature and age. The other man looked military at one point, close-cropped black hair not unlike Abraham's in style wearing a faded olive green tee shirt, khakis full of small tears, and thick, dark boots. He had a strong jaw and pronounced cheekbones, dark brown eyes that went wide when he saw the small artillery pointed at them.

The unknown man reached for a pistol at his hip when Lyal stopped him. The old man had a weathered face and a trimmed gray beard to match his full head of gray hair. His eyes were a hazel color, narrowed in a way that made him look eternally calculating.

"Hold up, Evan," Lyal said, looking around the group, "What're you guys standing here for." It was a statement masquerading as a question, like he was asking for a password.

"Gwen said this was the place to wait if we wanted to come back with you," Carl offered, both defensive and excited at the same time. It was a terrible conflict of emotion.

Lyal and Evan exchanged looks before the older man looked around the group, "You the folks from Peterson the other night?"

"We are," Rick said, taking a step forward. He still kept the barrel of his gun pointed away, but refused to put it down.

"Well," Lyal offered a smile that looked foreign on his haggard face, "If Gwen sayeth, then it must be done," This statement went over their heads, but not over Evan's who let out a small chuckle. It seemed their contact person had a reputation.

Evan turned to the side, offering them the path, "We'll take you where you want to go."

"We'll stay behind you, thanks," Michonne said with a catlike, warning smile.

Evan nodded slightly. He seemed to understand their reluctance, but he begrudged them for it. The younger of the two men seemed to be mistrusting, apprehensive of them. Rick frowned when he noticed it.

_We're putting ourselves in his hands and trusting him, but _he _doesn't trust _us_? _It was a strange thing to witness as the two strangers led them through the tunnel of trees.

"It's a ways," Lyal called over his shoulder, seemingly undisturbed by the small militia that walked behind him, "If you have to stop for a rest, just holler."

Nobody replied, everyone stayed on alert. It was hard to move through the densely packed tree path, but no guns went back into any holsters. Better to have something to defend yourself and be uncomfortable than be ambushed and wish you had something.

Lyal had not been exaggerating, it was quite a long ways down the path. The trees eventually opened up and the direction they were walking became more obvious, the group shifted from stiff line into amorphous blob while they moved. Carol looked around them at the trees, taking pause to smile at the blades of sunlight that pierced the canopy overhead. Whatever this world had become, it would always find a way to be beautiful.

They all stopped for a break after two hours or so. Evan produced a canteen of water and took a swig, offering it around the camp. It was clear the gesture was empty, like he was concerned they might try to do something to his water, and the hostility he projected made them all decline.

Beth felt a single tap on her shoulder and looked up. Daryl dropped down to sit beside her and placed her old pack at her feet, "Now I'm tired of carrying that thing. It's your turn."

She took a long draw from her water bottle and passed it to him, which he accepted and returned. There was little conversation, only the occasional murmur of cicadas coming to life around them in the woods.

Lyal got to his feet, but left his things. He was intending to address his followers, "We're taking you through to our city," Lyal looked around at them all, "I'm supposed to tell you a little about it so you're not a fish out of water."

Lyal cleared his throat and snatched the canteen Evan gave him, drinking before he continued, "We call our place Athens. That's the name the city had before and that's the name it should have now. There's a college there, most of the people who founded the place as a sanctuary come from the college. We're almost there, maybe another hour of walking, but I gotta tell you that it's gonna overwhelm you a little at first. It's scary because it's safe, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. That place has withstood two hordes and some other shit," the look that flickered across his face with that statement brought a surge of curiosity about the group, "and we can survive a ragtag bunch of travellers who think they have the balls to take it over. We're welcoming you into our home, we don't expect anything of you except that you work to make it your home, too. Got it?"

Nods all around seemed to satisfy him, "I'm Lyal Craig, this is Evan Merriweather. You're gonna meet a whole lot more people, but if you can remember us then we can help you get around."

The pause Lyal gave meant they were supposed to introduce themselves. Tyreese looked around before he did so, "I'm Tyreese. This is my sister, Sasha, and this is baby Judith."

Perhaps it was their initial indifference at the baby's presence that made everyone uncomfortable. Finally, Evan seemed to break a barrier he could no longer resist and he bent down to inspect Judith. When the infant smiled at him, he let out a soft chuckle. The interaction seemed to ease the tension between the two groups, at least a little.

"Carol. That's Beth, Maggie, Glenn," she pointed everyone out and paused.

"I'm Abraham, this is Rosita," Abraham looked from one man to the other.

"Father Gabriel," Gabriel seemed the most elated at these introductions, "This is Eugene, that's Carl, Michonne, Tara, and Rick."

Evan jerked his chin at Daryl, "And who're you?"

"Daryl," his voice was curt and stubborn, Daryl's shoulders shifted defensively.

Lyal nodded, "I'm gonna be honest, I'll forget all your names before we reach town. I'd like to say it's because I'm old, but it's because there's a damn lot of you all," he hoisted the worn backpack over his shoulders, "Let's get a move on, I want to be home for supper."

Something about the apprehension of the two men, their aura of mistrust, made everyone relax a little. If these were people who were sent out to kill them or capture them, they would not go so far as to mistrust them.

Lyal was spot on with his timing. An hour later, they were there.

On the horizon, the town rose into their view. The word town did not seem to do it justice, fortress seemed far more appropriate. Awe shivered down Glenn's spine and he stared at the place, wide-eyed. A wall had been erected around a large part of the city, an inner and an outer wall with a catwalk overhead. Towers lined the enormous wall every few yards and he saw the silhouettes of people patrolling them. The material they had used was a mixture of fortifications from old National Guard camps, sheets of steel and aluminum, and wood where necessary. It was hard not to be agog at the unorthodox grandeur of the thing.

Abraham paused beside Glenn as they got closer and they stared up at the walls in front of them, "Well I'll be damned," he said.

"Yeah, I'll be," Glenn replied, his mouth slack with wonder. So Gwen had not been lying to them, not even in the slightest.

One of the patrolling guards laughed, a woman's laugh from high up. The laugh seemed to break the scene of any seriousness, brought about a haze of cautiously positive energy. The guards seemed to take their role seriously, but they seemed to be enjoying it at least.

Evan's chest swelled with pride when he saw the wonder on all of their faces, "Welp, this is it. Fortress sweet fortress."

"Let's get them in to see the boss man," Lyal said roughly, no time for sentimental nonsense in his world. The older man took his role very seriously.

Rick held back, his arm crossed over Carl, and leaned down to his son, "If anything happens, you run back to Peterson. You hear me?"

"Yeah, dad, I hear you," he did in theory hear his father, but Carl was far too absorbed in the sight in front of him. It was like something out of a science fiction novel, a foreign behemoth looming over the land that surrounded it.

The space in front of the walls had been lined with a mixture of wooden spikes and barbed wire, but was relatively clear of walkers. Only a few lay slumped and dead in front of it. One still reached upwards at a guard who eventually fired something from what appeared to be a slingshot into its head, laying it to rest.

The group stopped before two enormous panels of steel that seemed to be a welded-together pair of old cafeteria doors. Lyal signaled to a figure in one of the crow's nests, "Morning, Carlos!"

"It's afternoon, Lyal. Geez, you going senile already?" the guard cried down, "Who've you got with you today?"

"Big group, people who say Gwen sent 'em to us," Lyal sighed with irritation, "Could you open the damn door, you lazy ass?"

"It's coming, it's coming!," there was a high pitched squeal and a creaking of metal, slowly the two doors began to open like the jaws of some ancient beast long since forgotten.

A radio in a pouch of Lyal's backpack blipped, Rick jumped at the sound and lifted his gun. It was slight, but he realized what the sound had been and put it back down. A radio. It had been, what, two years since Rick had seen any working radios?

Lyal pressed the call button, "Tell the boss I've got some packages to deliver. We're coming through A Gate."

They moved as a unit, both anxious and awestruck at the sight laid out in front of them. Other than the enormous walls, they were looking in at a normal town. A town before the virus, before walkers. It was like stepping into a time machine. A young man on a bicycle with a bag full of papers rode across their vision, a pair of women were cleaning rifles at a rack by the stairs to the crow's nest where Carlos must be, Rick could have sworn he heard a child laugh somewhere.

It was Lyal's turn to swell with pride, gesturing at the town, "Welcome to Athens."

A small trio of residents stepped forwards from the picturesque scene in front of them, one of them was Gwen. Lyal gestured back to the people following him, "Did my job, my lady. Brought 'em here safe and sound."

Gwen's face was alight with a smile, so big it touched her eyes. How anyone could carry such a smile in the face of such terrible tragedy befuddled everyone who stood in front of her, fixated on the utter complacent normalcy that seemed to be unfolding around them.

She held out her arms to demonstrate the enormity of what they were looking at, "Welcome to Athens, everybody."

Rick shuddered and the wonder seemed to disappear, his old self coming back to him. He stalked forwards and pushed past the two men, keeping his gun always in his hand. He loomed over her, a terrible force of caution, irritability, and confusion.

"Take me to this boss of yours," he said sharply, "I'd like to have some words with him."

Gwen's lips twitched into a secretive smile, "Why, Rick," her voice was gentle, "You are."

"What?" it took a moment to register what she had just said. He felt dizzy, looked around the strange sight before him, and looked back to her.

Gwen. Gwen was the city's leader.


	5. No Place Like Home

**A/N:** I feel like I should let you know this setup is all intentional. In TWD universe, nothing is perfect and nowhere is utopian. Everything I've taken time to point out is worth the sentences I've wasted on it, I promise. Thank you guys for the positive reviews and the encouragement!

**Chapter 5: No Place Like Home**

Rick recovered from his shock and took a step back, pointing at her accusingly, "You're their leader?"

"Bona fide, I promise," Gwen's smile faltered, she was slightly offended by his implication, "I don't like the term 'leader', though. That carries something sinister with it. I don't own these people, they chose to put me in charge."

"It's true," Lyal stated in an attempt to add credibility to her statement, "Held elections six months ago. Gwen won by a landslide."

"Elections?" Rick repeated the word as though in a daze. This was not happening, this could not be a real place. He must be having a fever dream. He and his people had not been wandering around the Georgia countryside to find this place two years later. How come nobody they met had told them about it? Not one person they had encountered had mentioned anywhere like this.

Then it dawned on him. Zach, Beth's old boyfriend. He had said something about paradise or a city or something. Everyone had their urban myths about a citadel or a fortress, a city in the sky or an impenetrable bastion. Zach had believed his own story with such a fervor that he had appealed to Rick once to search for it.

"_It's out there, Rick!" Zach shouted, gesturing to the window of the prison office, "I know it's out there."_

"_Fairytale," Rick said with a dismissive wave of his hand, "You're asking me to help you find Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy!"_

"_I know it's real," Zach replied. His tone was so firm Rick was actually taken aback, "You may be losing hope, but I'm not."_

And that was how the conversation had ended, Zach stormed out and slammed the door. That was the day he died, there had been no more conversation about the matter

_Was this his paradise?_ Rick thought, _Was this what Zach was talking about?_

"Look," Gwen broke his train of thought and turned her eyes to everyone standing behind him, "This place, for everything great that it is," she gestured behind her to illustrate her point, "is not for everyone."

"If we decide it's not for us?" Michonne spoke up on behalf of the group, addressing a fear they had all been ignoring.

Gwen looked at her purposefully and smiled again, "Then you're welcome to leave. People nowadays don't always play well with others and can't always stay in a place like this. We get that. We accommodate for it. More than one person uses us as a base without actually living here."

Michonne frowned and rested her hand on her sword hilt, "No offense, but the last time someone told me I could leave if I wanted to, the guy kept a dead girl in his closet and brought a tank to our front door."

Memories of the Governor brought with them a shiver through the collective spine of the group. Everyone had tried to put him out of their minds, pretend he had never existed. To hear someone remind them of it drew in all the comparisons they could make between the two scenarios. Woodbury against Athens. It was a mirror, but a mirror that did not necessarily reflect the same things. By comparison, Woodbury was a shadow compared to Athens.

Gwen let out a nervous laugh, "Well I can promise you I don't have a dead girl in any of my closets and the only tank we have is locked in the Tyndall garage. I'm the only one with the key."

"You have a tank?" Abraham asked. She shrugged and nodded.

Glen laughed slightly and shook his head, knowing what he was about to ask would sound crazy, "This is going to be a ridiculous question."

"I'm getting pretty used to that," Gwen eyed Rick and Michonne carefully.

"You're not going to try and eat us, are you?" Maggie elbowed him. In light of their unbelievable situation, the question was laughable. Fifteen minutes ago, though, it would have been reasonable.

Gwen let out a musical laugh. It seemed strange that they had not heard her elicit a genuine laugh, despite their recent interactions. Rick found the sound surprisingly comforting and let himself feel at ease for a moment.

She wiped her eyes and spoke through her chuckling, "No, I promise we're not gonna eat you. We keep animals around for that."

"Livestock?" Beth chimed it, "You have livestock?"

Gwen inhaled and exhaled deeply, "The college had an agricultural science program when everything fell, a couple of blocks away. I'll tell you the history, just know we lost the cattle, but we got the chickens and pigs. We breed rabbits because it's easy."

It made sense now, Rick considered thoughtfully. The rabbits Gwen had brought were from their own supply. The gesture seemed so much bigger now, part of him felt slightly guilty about it. That part was quickly subdued when his caution forced itself back into the picture.

"Nobody makes something like this without a price," Rick said. He would know, he had run the prison and brought people in, vetted them, knew who was a good fit and who would be toxic. Rick knew what went down when someone was not a good fit.

Something about Gwen's expression changed, became more false. It was the first measure of falseness that she had ever shown them. That recognition made Rick feel more guilty, she had been being genuine with them. Still, he held his skeptical ground.

"We take people in. We keep them if they are good for the community, we don't if they aren't," It was her vagueness that disturbed him.

"What do you do if they _aren't_?" Rick demanded.

Gwen shifted uncomfortably and he watched her smile disappear under a frown, her eyes narrowed and she let him take a step towards her without reacting, "We send them away."

There was a finality in her statement that made Rick's people uncomfortable. Carol looked over at Tyreese who clutched Judith closer. Maggie took a step back and wrapped her fingers against Glenn's wrist.

"Not like that," Gwen sighed and rubbed her temples, "I'm sorry. We're getting off on the wrong foot here. You guys are acting like all I want is to find a reason to kill you," there was desperation in her eyes, genuine desperation that the met Daryl's face with, "We aren't. We don't want to kill you, we want to help you."

"Look," it was Lyal who stepped in to protect his leader, "when someone isn't a good fit here, we do what we have to do to get them on their way. What's important is we take care of our own."

So it was in her hands, Rick considered, everything was up to her, everyone's fate seemed to come right back to Gwen. He stared at her now, wariness and distrust seeped into his bones. Rick took a step towards her, just one, when he felt a hand grab the sleeve of his jacked. He turned and looked down at his son.

"Dad," Carl whispered. He did not say any more, just willed his father to hear what he wanted to say. There was a long silence that passed between them.

_It's no different than us,_ Rick thought to himself, _If the Governor had shown up at our gates, we would have killed him for threatening what we built. We _did _kill him for what he did to us_.

Rick ran a hand through his tangled hair. He exhaled loudly and looked over his shoulder, taking a careful inventory of the faces that were looking to him for confirmation. This was always how it went, everyone wanted to give their input and yet it was always Rick who cast the deciding vote. It was a system that did not leave him bitter or angry, but it put a pressure on his shoulders that none of them could understand.

Finally, Rick returned his gaze to her. It was not Rick who spoke, though, but Gwen.

"Look, I know we aren't perfect," she said, a pleading look in her eyes, "Nowhere is perfect, but we're pretty damn close. I'm not asking you to look at us as the pinnacle of survival, the apex of post-viral civilization. I'm asking you to give our colony a chance. Not everything we do will be perfect, but it will be reasonable. I made a promise when I was elected that I would make this colony safe and prosperous above everything else. I intend to fulfill my promise."

Rick was startled by her speech's honestly, plainness. His time in this apocalyptic world had taught him a number of things, but the most important thing was to detect when someone was lying. Nothing about Gwen's words made him doubt her. He rather felt the opposite, a surge of desire to express that he believed her. It was probably her youthfulness that made him relent, it could have been how petite she was, or any number of physical characteristics that inspired gentleness in him. Whatever it was, Rick redacted his step and took his hand off his gun.

Rick looked down at the dusty, broken road under his feet and then back to her, "We can leave if this isn't for us?"

"You can leave if this isn't for you," Gwen nodded her assent, "You can always use us as a base. We trade supplies and things you can't get out there for things you can't get in here."

It must have been her implication of the outside world that brought Rick back to reality. Gwen had been scavenging, hunting for supplies when she could have sent one of her people to do it. The Governor was not the kind of person to put his neck out there for his people, not really anyway. The Governor had been good at spinning tales, making people think he was on their level. He was a dictator who disguised himself as a common man in the eyes of his people. To keep comparing the two in his subconscious seemed unfair, all it did was manage to illustrate how different they really were anyway.

Abraham stepped forward in Rick's place and extended his hand to her.

"Abraham Ford," It was not the act of shaking someone's hand that felt strange, it was the setting in which it was happening. Abraham was not convinced he would ever see a city again, let alone one that was flourishing. 'Flourishing' was subjective, of course, nobody flourished exactly.

Gwen felt her throat tighten and swallowed, surprising herself with how hard she was fighting for them to stay, and shook it. Good people came along once in a lifetime, to let them get away would be a cardinal sin.

"This is Tessa," she gestured to a girl no older than fourteen to her side, "she will show you around a little and assign you your housing."

"We don't want to be separated," Glenn stepped forwards with a sense of purpose.

Gwen nodded and let her cordial smile spread across her face, "I wouldn't dream of it. Tessa has orders to assign you housing together. I can't ask you to be separated or give up your arms if you don't want to, it's a rule."

It felt final, there was nowhere else for Gwen to take the conversation. She reached out and took Rick's absently stretched out hand, clasping it in her own. Her skin was cool against his, but her hands calloused and rough from hard work. When she slid her hands away, Rick felt his cold palms in a more pronounced way. It had been a long time since someone had touched him for a reason other than to maim him or save him. He found himself unsure of what to do next.

They had been assigned houses, six to a home. Real, physical houses that had been cleared out of everything but their furniture. The young girl that showed them their living space returned to give them a basket of produce, a few recently canned goods, and a promise to take them to the Administration building the next morning where they would be told what happens next.

"Everyone has a job," Tessa said in her deep-bayou Louisiana accent, "we try to put you in something that suits your skills. Just tell 'em what you want to do and you'll probably get it."

Maggie closed the door behind her and leaned against it. Glenn reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with her eyes searching, trying to find answers in his face.

"I'm dreaming, aren't I?" she said softly, "Or I'm dead. I'm either dreaming or dead and I'm not sure which would be better right now."

Glen pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her, stroking Maggie's hair, "I don't think you're either."

Michonne paced through the other house, feeling the floorboards creaking under her feet. Despite herself, she realized she was anticipating walkers. Intellectually, Michonne knew there were none, but two years of clearing walkers out of houses and prisons did not just go away because someone she did not know said it was safe.

Eugene stepped out from the doorway she was coming across and startled himself when he saw her skulking down the hall in silence. He jumped with a small cry of alarm and scrambled backwards with such a lack of grace, it made Michonne burst into a loud laugh that caused Rick, Carl, Daryl, and Beth to come running. Michonne slid down the wall and sat down on the floorboards, unable to stop the constant torrent of laughter that shook her whole body.

Eugene's chest heaved with the effect of having been startled so badly and he looked around accusingly at everyone, "It would be greatly appreciated if you'd stop laughing at me."

Beth covered her mouth to try and stop the infection of good spirits, but she could not stop herself and started to feel her shoulders shake with laughter. Carl's face spread into a broad grin and he looked up at Rick. It spread around the group person by person. Not the laughter, not really anyway, but the feeling of elation. There was a feeling nobody could place, like the home was a blank canvas waiting for them to fill it with something beautiful after so many months of chaos. This was what they all remembered joy to feel like. All of a sudden they were back at the prison, all of them together again, happy, laughing. Surviving.


	6. The Prettiest View

**A/N:** You guys are my favorite, seriously. I couldn't keep writing without an audience that felt the story I was trying to tell was worth reading. :)

**Chapter 6: The Prettiest View**

The two houses they had been given were almost identical. Low-roofed, two storey craftsman homes with peeling white trim and cracked, faded paint. The wooden floors were in dire need of a varnish and the cabinets were mostly intact, with a few exceptions. On the top floors of both were four bedrooms, the master bedroom was the only room that had two beds in it, the others were too small for more than one. Downstairs, each house had a small office area that had been converted into another bedroom and a guest room on the bottom floor made five. Enough space for six people comfortably. The area around the college had been affluent, the houses spacious, and the roads well kept. Now, those same roads had started to crack, weeds pushing their way through the asphalt in a desperate attempt to be closer to the sun.

Lawns were not as overgrown as they should have been, it was a grounds crew used a push mower to keep them that way. Nothing was watered unless it came from the occasional storm, so all of the yards seemed to be a patchwork quilt of healthy and dying grass. There had been enough flatware and dishes for six people in the cabinets, but they would need to be re-washed after every meal. To everyone's surprise, there was running water. The pressure was bad and it was always cold, but running water was running water. Someone had put a tall shelving unit where the fridge once stood, now obsolete without electricity.

The closets had a few extra sheets in them, but from the looks of it all of the linens were whatever had been left by the home's' previous owners. Eugene could not sleep, he was up with the dawn light. Michonne sitting at the mismatched kitchen table seemed to be precisely what he had expected, so he sat down across from her and stared at his hands.

"You think we made the right choice?" The sliver of doubt in her tone was certainly not enough to worry him, but it made Eugene consider their circumstance more impartially

"Yes, ma'am, I think we did," he knew his response was awkward, but everyone seemed to be used to it right now.

Michonne nodded slowly and glanced up at the doorway. Daryl paused and jerked his chin towards them in his version of a greeting, "Y'all sleep okay?"

A collective shrug was what Daryl had been anticipating, knowing the answer before they gave it to him. When you travelled with people for so long, endured so much, words seemed frivolous. It was why Gwen's niceties had been so strange to them all. Her strange take on directness and her focus on verbal comfort was an antiquated style of conversation already.

Daryl leaned against the doorway and folded his arms, staring out the window out on the street. He heard soft, light footsteps coming down the stairs. He could identify them as Beth's from a mile away. She looked around the kitchen for a moment before walking confidently to the small basket of produce they had been provided. It was not really a basket, it was a laundry hamper that had been repurposed. Still, Beth plucked a few apples from it, small little things at the tail end of their season.

Beth rummaged through the drawers for a knife and started to slice them up carefully. Daryl met her at the other side of the basket and began pulling out cans of green beans, all fresh by comparison to what they had been finding.

Beth eyed the canned green beans he opened and he shrugged at her, "Dunno when we're gonna get to eat like this again. Might as well enjoy it."

She gave a breathy laugh through her nose and shook her head. He was right, of course, but something about the way he said it had been charming.

Rick was still buttoning his shirt when he came downstairs and looked around the room, Carl fast on his heels. None of them had realized how much silence there had been until Carl broke it.

"Apples!" He said excitedly, rushing the basket and rummaging through the contents, "Beans, canned peppers, onions, I think this is lettuce!" He held up the bundle of green leaves with a triumphant grin.

Daryl smiled half heartedly, "You're the only one on the planet that's happy to see some lettuce, kid." He gave Carl a gentle shove with his elbow.

Beth gave them both a warm, meaningful smile, her eyes meeting Daryl's. They shared a look, full of secrets, full of something that belonged only to them, just for a moment. It was only a second or two before Rick crossed between them and the moment was lost.

Rick sat at the table and took in all of it, the calmness of the streets outside, the feeling of safety that came with the house, the smell of dirt that fresh vegetables brought into the house with them. Michonne handed him the can of green beans and he pulled a bunch of pods from it, holding them up. They were small, grown in bulk to support a town, but they were fresh and new. Despite their being canned probably months ago, the crunching sound that accompanied them was satisfying it its own way.

They stayed like that, clustered in their kitchen - it seemed strange to think of something as theirs still - until a little after dawn. Silence that was not oppressive or weighty, but silence that was peaceful and calm seemed to flow between them rather than bear down on their shoulders.

There was a loud knock at the door that should have startled them, but for some reason failed to do so. Michonne let herself smile for just a moment, feeling like she was suddenly in a fifties television show. Albeit a very twisted fifties television show.

Rick looked around the group and met their expectant glances. He got to his feet and opened the door slowly. Tessa stood outside, sun kissed blond hair cut short to her chin and freckles smeared across her face. They would have made her look younger than she was, but there was a weathered sense of purpose in the lines already forming around her mouth that told him Tessa had endured the world rather than experienced it.

"Promised to take y'all down to Admin and get you signed in," she rocked back and forth on her heels.

Rick hesitated and looked behind him. His group stood there, waiting for his permission to go. They seemed eager to find out what the system was rather than cautious about what it could do to them.

_Not like at Woodbury,_ he reminded himself, _No, not at all. Like what Woodbury was dreaming of being._ Something about the realization comforted him and Rick swung the door wide to let everyone out.

"Um," Tessa stopped them and looked them over, "Do you maybe want to shower or wash your clothes before we go? You'll be gone for hours."

"We've been living in the woods without showers for months, we can handle a few more hours," Michonne purred, amused at this little girl's concern for their personal hygiene. That kind of thing had not been something they worried about since the prison fell.

Eugene grunted quietly, but said nothing. He wanted to dissent and take a quick bath, but to argue with Michonne after what he had done did not seem like such a good idea.

Tessa stopped them and went to retrieve the rest of their group, staring down at baby Judith. At first it was with surprise, then it was with interest, and finally it culminated in a laugh that sounded how molasses tasted.

"Anyone usually in charge of watching this lil' bean?" Tessa looked at them and waited for an answer.

"I've been, mostly," Tyreese said reluctantly with a confirming nod from Carol. He loved watching Judith and Rick letting the baby stay with them last night had managed to bring him comfort somehow. It was a base desire to keep loved ones close in turbulent times.

"You want to keep watching her or leave her at our daycare? The caregivers would _love_ to see a baby!" Tessa's eyes were bright and she was piqued with interest in the child. Judith gave a gurgle in reply.

Tyreese smiled down at her, an expression that was full of care and gentleness, "No, I'll stay with her today."

"Suit yourself," Tessa shrugged and gestured for them to follow her down the street.

The town was eclectic, a mix of patched-up homes that had once been tastefully kept and modestly upper middle class, a few run down shops that had once been a coffee house or a boutique clothing outlet now served other purposes like a food dispensary and a washing house. People milled about the streets, walking with a sense of purpose someone acquired when they had a job to do or a task to complete.

Carol scanned the street they turned on to and it occurred to her to that she had left her rifle at the house. Unconsciously, she had laid down her arms. She brought up a hand to feel for the hilt of her knife. Still there. Looking around, she realized everyone else had done the same thing. Only Rick carried his gun against his hip, but Carol had started to suspect it was permanently affixed to his bones.

She held back and watched her people with a mixture of confusion and gladness, letting a slow smile creep onto her face. By no means did this place feel like salvation or like they would never have to fight for survival again, but it did feel like it was where they were supposed to be. For now, that was enough.

The Administration building was a large, brick building covered in a blanket of vines. They had made it to the campus of the college and it looked exactly like a college in a brochure should look. The buildings were old, but in a way that made them seem wizened and anthropomorphized to feel like old men. No matter what was happening outside, these buildings would last forever. Brick with white shutters, tendrils of vines sometimes weaving themselves together in a thick blanket, terra cotta tile roofs that would hold up under any inclement weather.

Carl paused and stared at the business of the common area, an open forum where multiple pathways converged and people were talking or passing books around or reviewing schematics for an expansion project. It dawned on him that this was probably the closest he would get to a college experience. The realization was bittersweet.

Tessa pointed down one of the brick paths that had been surprisingly well maintained, "Straight down that path and you'll get right to the Administration building. I gotta go, my overseer is waiting for me. Have a good one!"

Rick lifted his hand absently to wave goodbye, and surveyed the people standing in front of him. They would not go without the green light, if he chose to give it then they would be separated for the entire day and not see each other until nightfall. It felt like they were always splitting up right before the main event.

"You can go if you want, I'm not gonna stop you," he said with a sigh, "Just...be careful. We still don't really know what's going on here," Rick spotted someone who was familiar, Lyal walking through the common area, "but I intend to find out. Be safe."

Rick paused and kissed the top of his son's head, the top of Carl's hat anyway, and took him by the shoulders. Carl was tall enough by now that he did not need to bend down to look him in the eyes.

"You stay cautious, stay alert, and run home if anything's wrong. Find out people and get out the second you get a bad feeling, okay?"

"Dad," his son replied, "We'll be fine."

Rick broke into a jog and clapped a hand hard on Lyal's shoulder. The older man turned to face him calmly. He let his eyes drift from Rick's head to his feet, saying nothing, waiting like he had been anticipating this moment.

"Take me to her," Rick said firmly, feeling no need to specify the subject he referred to.

Lyal said nothing, but did reply with a slow nod. He turned on his heel and started walking towards another building, more brick than vine, with the word 'Office' labeled across the top in faded bronze letters. He flashed some sort of badge at the two men guarding it and they let the two of them by. Lyal remained silent while they walked up a flight of stairs covered in a threadbare burgundy carpet. The same carpeting was consistent all through the hallway they passed through. Doors were closed, but it looked like shelves had been pushed over and kept them that way.

There was only one door that looked movable, Lyal paused in front of it and raised a hand to knock. Before he did so, he asked Rick a question.

"Whatever you want to know, are you certain you want to know it?" his voice was low and serious, not that it seemed like anything amusing could ever come out of him.

"I'm sure," Rick responded defiantly, shifting his shoulders back like he was preparing for a fight.

Lyal rapped on the door and Gwen's voice told them to come in. She wore her hair in a long, thick braid over her shoulder. Rick had not quite realized how long it was until that moment, draped like a rope that brushed the top of the desk Gwen was standing at and leaning over. She lifted her face to the door and her smile flickered away briefly. She looked at Lyal for confirmation.

"What's this?"

"He asked to see you, ma'am," Lyal said, telling her something else that Rick could not quite make out with his face, "I'm assuming he's got some questions for you."

"Okay then," her voice was flat like she was calculating her next move, "You can leave us." She straightened and slipped a thumb into the belt holding up her too-big jeans.

"You're positive, ma'am?" Lyal said, balancing a rifle butt in the crook of his elbow.

"I'm sure, you can leave us. He's not gonna hurt me," her expression turned warm, amused at the degree of protection Lyal was emanating.

The door closed with a click, but Lyal's broad-shouldered silhouette could be seen through the warped, frosted glass. Gwen was watching Rick patiently. He said nothing for a moment, just stared at her. Her eyes were bright with intelligence, her face soft and calm, the level of composure she maintained was impressive. She was trying to trust him and give him a reason to trust her in return. Finally, Rick stepped towards her.

"What goes on around here?"

"You'll have to be more specific, a lot goes on around here." She kept her voice level and Rick was not sure if he would ever learn when she was joking or being serious.

"This place," he swirled his finger in the air to illustrate his meaning, "how do you do this? How do you keep it this way?"

"I'm not sure I know what you mean," Gwen folded her arms across her chest and leaned back a little. The stance did not make her look taller.

Rick ran a hand through his hair and looked away while he tried to find an abbreviated way to describe two years of constant fear and put that into the context of believing they were hiding something.

"Your's isn't the first place like this we've encountered," he kept his tone firm without being threatening, "Every time we come upon something like this, we always have to give something up. There's always some way people keep a place like this going and it's never a price I'm willing to pay."

Gwen paused and rephrased his question back at him, "How do we keep this place going without making it a tyranny?"

Rick nodded and tried to keep his gaze locked on her, but found it difficult. There was an intensity to her that seemed to flare around the question like a wild blaze.

Before she could open her mouth, there was a knock on her door and a voice that followed, "Gwen, we're ready."

Rick eyed the door suspiciously and turned himself back to face her. The expression she carried had shifted in the moment he was not looking from skeptical consideration to taut and drawn. He saw a glimpse of her then, what was behind the mask of cheeriness she had been displaying then. It was not vengeance or evil or calculated rage, but exhaustion. She was tired, her face was drawn and full of the shadows that followed someone who was faced with hard decisions every day. Rick knew that look, he knew those shadows. It was like looking in a mirror.

"You want to know how we keep ourselves going?" she knew he would say yes, "I'll let you see for yourself. Come in, Marianne."

The woman who opened the door could have played an Amazoness in any number of old movies. She was broad shouldered, tall, wound with muscle. Dark red hair was wild, held at bay by only a green piece of cloth. She looked Rick up and down, gauging him, before motioning with her head. Another man came around the corner, dark hair short and dipped into his eyes. He was thin, his eyes narrow, and a cock-eyed smirk on his face. Lyal followed behind him and shut the door.

Rick moved away from the scene, standing near Gwen's desk to have a better vantage point. The slender man in front of her did not seem concerned with his presence. He tilted his head left and right with a sickening pop, keeping his eyes locked on Gwen's face. She placed her hands on the desk and searched the man.

"Piers Gray," the authority in Gwen's tone matched the graveness of her expression.

"Gwen Rowe," Piers said with a shrug. He seemed carefree in theory, but the perspiration on his hands, the consistent hard swallowing, and the periodic tension in his jaw gave him away. Piers was not just nervous, he was afraid.

Rick watched Gwen now, every muscle tight under his skin. He had no idea what would happen next, no idea why this man was here, and all of this lack of knowing ate into him like a virus. He charted his escape plan in the back of his head in the ten seconds of silence that passed through the room. Everything seemed to carry with it a sense of heaviness and finality, Rick would not have been surprised if the romo started to rain under the feeling of gray.

"Do you know why you're here?" Gwen spoke, that same authoritative grimness in her voice.

"Not a clue," Piers was being cocky and insubordinate. It was a stark contrast from the typical respect Gwen apparently commanded among her people.

"Yes you do," she whispered, "You're here because of Yakob and Eleanor. Because of what you did to them."

Piers' face seemed to falter then and he gave her an incredulous snort, "You can't prove that, I had nothing to do with it! That was an accident!"

Gwen sighed deeply, she was Atlas shrugging the world on his shoulders, "No, Piers. I can prove it. I can prove it through Yakob's version of what happened and the version of the two patrols I had that watched it. They're the reason Yakob lived."

The color drained from Piers' face and he took a step away. Marianne reached out to him and stopped the scrawny man from leaving.

"You ran from Eleanor when she could have been saved, you were ambushed by three of the dead. Instead, you ran," something in Gwen's posture change and for all her lack of height she seemed to tower over the man like the black, rolling clouds of a hurricane on the horizon, "And when Yakob called for you, screamed for you to wait for him," a pause, a moment to choke back the flood of emotion that came with recounting this story, "and you shot him in the leg so you could get away."

Piers stayed silent, his chest heaving. Rick said nothing, just stood by the desk and watched. His focus was on Gwen, everything else seemed inconsequential. He realized why they all kept turning to her now, she could command a room when she demanded its attention.

"You left Yakob to die," she reiterated, "and if it wasn't for our patrols, he would have died like Eleanor."

"That's not my fault!" Piers said again, a weakened and strangled cry.

Gwen slammed her fist into the surface of the desk, "Eleanor is _not_ the only one!" the fire in her face was terrifying, "Marnie, Clark, Laura, Jeremy!" each name was punctuated by a pound of her fist, "You are a cancer, Piers Gray, and you must be excised. How do you plead?"

Piers looked around the room, stopped on Rick like he was pleading for a moment. The futility of it all settled in and his cockeyed smirk reappeared on his face, "They deserved it."

Gwen inhaled slowly and controlled her exhale as carefully as she could, "Those were our people. And you let them die."

"No," Piers said with the confidence of a man who knew he was about to die, "Those were Scavs. They picked over the land and came here when they were afraid. All of the apocalypse and none of the threat of it. They were a waste of resources, they were going to bleed us dry."

"We have _plenty_," Gwen raised her voice, "and we have half of what we do because of our Scavengers! You have a working flashlight because of Eleanor, we have a welder for the walls because of Laura and metal because of Clark and Marnie. And now? You have your fate because of Yakob."

Lyal and Marianne stepped in to flank him and took his arms. Lyal spoke for them both, "What are your orders, ma'am?"

Gwen considered her options, whatever they might be, "Execution. Take him to where we recovered Eleanor. I want him to see the dirt where she bled to death because of him."

With a wave of her hand, it was over. Rick stood, confused, conflicted. The part of him that retained his humanity, his sheriff self, seethed with some kind of injustice. Execution? The only option? At the same time, he was reminded of Parrish. If they had killed him when they had the chance, any single person in his group would have. It was kindness that had nearly killed them, it was probably kindness that had nearly killed Athens as well.

Gwen said nothing for a moment, staring down at some papers she had been reviewing. She sighed heavily and turned her eyes back to Rick. Something about how he saw her had changed. It was only fifteen minutes, but it looked like a lifetime on her face. The cheery disposition was probably not an act, but a part of Gwen she nurtured like a seed. What was behind the cheeriness was grim determination to survive. The method of "at all costs" was not new to her, she would protect what was built under her feet with her life if she needed to. From the look of it, Gwen already had at least once.

"You wanted to see how we keep it going?" her voice was tight, "You saw it. That's our big secret."

Rick said nothing to her, but watched the subtle changes as she nurtured that cheeriness back to life. She let out a strangled laugh and ran a hand through her bangs, looking him over again.

"You should do something about that hair," Gwen was nervous talking.

"You sentenced a man to death." it was a statement of fact above all else.

"What else should I have done?" a sad smile, "We don't have a prison. Someone who leaves people to die, someone who sacrifices someone else to save himself? That's not someone we can have here. Piers would sow the seed of discord among all my Scavengers and bring blood with him. It's not a choice anyone makes lightly."

Rick rubbed his forehead and nodded, looking towards the door, "Okay," he said finally, "Okay."

Something about his response brought her comfort. Rick had been witness to a scene many people had not yet had, but he was more stubborn than the others, more insistent. His people were smart and resourceful, Gwen was trying to let them trust her. Every other option would have been futile, nothing would be enough until they could see the innermost workings of how Athens had survived.

"We've seen our share of bloodshed here," she said, her voice quiet with memories, "I will do whatever I can to make sure we don't see it again."

Rick followed her as she moved to the door, "What's happened here?"

Gwen smiled at him, different this time. It was such a raw sight, made him feel like he was seeing her bare naked in front of him, but at the same time he felt connection instead of fear. Gwen knew next to nothing about him, but she had exposed the most terrible part of herself anyway. Rick had to find a measure of respect in that kind of transparency. The way he had interacted with people had been one of two ways: a tyrannical society that failed or an overly optimistic society that failed. Gwen had struck a balance, far from perfect, but a balance nonetheless.

She reached out and touched his cheek with a sense of camaraderie, "I have watch tonight by A Gate. Nighttime seems to be a better time for stories."

Gwen opened the door and let Rick leave, closing it slowly.

_Am I making a mistake?_ she thought, _I can't afford to make a mistake, not again. I won't let it happen again. _


	7. I Am Survivor

**A/N: **I laughed a little because someone pointed out _exactly_ what I intended the next chapter to do: shift focus to the rest of the group.

**Chapter 7: I Am Survivor**

"Expansion team," said the man behind the counter, handing Abraham a wooden token rather unceremoniously.

Abraham flipped the item over in his hand and examined it carefully. Probably once a piece of a chair or other piece of furniture, someone had burned "ExT" on one side of the coin and "ASC" on the other. He held it up to the man who gave it to him.

"What does 'ASC' mean?"

"Athens Survivor's Colony," he replied without looking up, "And expansion team leaves from B Gate. Just follow Euclid Street east and you'll hit it."

Abraham gave a grunt of acknowledgement and turned to find the door. He paused to kiss Rosita, "See you tonight, I guess."

"Yeah," she said sadly, "I guess." Truthfully, Rosita was worried about him. Abraham had been so uncharacteristically quiet and subdued since Eugene confessed, he was taking orders without complaint and without question. The man she had known would never just turn around and go to work without asking why, but this man did. He was not the same.

She smiled at the man behind the counter and gave her name when he prompted her, "Rosita Espinosa,"

He scribbled it down in some sort of ledger, "If you could have your pick, what would you want to do?"

"I'm a good shot, but I'm handy with a wrench," Rosita offered. It was strange, a colony giving them the option to suggest what they would be good for, but it made sense. Nobody here knew them except their group.

"Mechanics?" the man offered. He handed her a similar wood token when she nodded her approval, 'ASC' on one side and 'Mech' on the other, "Same direction I sent your friend, just go west instead of east. You'll see it, the mech guys are hard to miss."

So it went, names written in the ledger, tokens handed out, jobs assigned. Glenn chased down Abraham with the intention of walking together to the Expansion Team.

"What do you think they'll have us do?" Glenn did not actually care, he just wanted to break the awkward silence between the two of them. Abraham seemed lost or distant somehow, he was checked out in a way.

"Expand, probably," he offered, not a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

Glenn exhaled a laugh anyway, "I think that's them," He was beginning to get the sense that the massive city they had originally anticipated the place to be was a whole lot smaller than they thought.

There was a cluster of men and women standing outside an old bodega-style market, a middle-aged woman handed out incomplete tool belts to them. When they got closer, she held out her hand and gestured for them to join the group.

"Got your tokens?" she said with a midwestern twang in her voice. They handed her the wooden chips and she pocketed them, "You'll get thirty minutes for lunch, water's available when you need it. If you need to take a break, just take it. We work on an honor system."

"We didn't bring lunch," Glenn said, feeling stupid. They should have considered that before they left the house, part of him blamed Tessa for not warning them.

The woman laughed, "Oh, sweet child, don't think about that. Our guys will take care of you." She waved a hand dismissively and addressed her work crew, "All right, let's head out!"

She stopped Abraham and Glenn, "Are you armed?"

"No," Glenn asked, Abraham's silence was starting to become irritating. He would have walked right along with the group, asking no questions.

"Hmm," she considered them before handing Abraham a handgun from her own holster and Glenn a knife, "Do you know what we do here? Anyone explain it to you?" They shook their heads and she sighed with annoyance, "I'm gonna have to kill Austin, he keeps sending me people and not telling 'em what we're about. I'm Kellyjean Hill, but please call me Kelly," she extended a hand which only Glenn shook, "In ET we take down the temp wall and we move it down a block. Then we clear out all the buildings, repair 'em, and move the wall down again. You're lucky and you missed the moving stage, but we want you to stay armed, the clearing stage isn't quite done. You guys look capable, be extremely cautious. If you get hurt or overwhelmed, blow on these," she handed them a pair of small whistles, "our Guard team will come runnin' and take you to medical or blow some heads off."

"Sound attracts them, how is this a good idea?" Glenn held up the whistle and stared at her.

Kelly shrugged, "When you think of a better system, tell me. Until then, we've got whistles."

She led them to the first of two temporary walls: one to protect the city, one to section off the block they were clearing out. Someone had thought to saw a functional door into the first and second walls, both made of reinforced plywood. Kelly stopped at a relatively quiet section of housing where a handful of workers were already on the roofs of a few houses.

She turned back to them, "Remember, be careful and don't be too proud to call for help. People are a precious commodity, everyone here is valuable."

Abraham barely waited for Kelly to finish before picking one of the houses. It seemed safe enough at the time, at least until Glenn opened the door to one of the bedrooms with the best roof access. A walker reached for him and grabbed the front of his shirt, Glen pulled back sharply and plunged the knife into its head. Abraham pushed the door open and hauled the corpse outside. Kelly had instructed them to leave the bodies outside and one of their cleanup groups would come and take it to be disposed. Whatever that meant, neither Abraham nor Glenn felt like asking.

Someone called to them from the street and offered them planks and strips of roofing material to patch with. They rigged a pulley system to bring themselves the supplies without having to go back downstairs a hundred times, it was a good system. Glenn wiped his arm across his forehead to wick away the sweat pouring down his face. He was breathing heavily and had lost track of time. Abraham seemed to feel no such exhaustion, silently hammering away at the tiles they tore from the sheet of asphalt shingles. The sun beat down overhead and made the work that much more exhausting. Glenn secretly wished they had taken Tessa up on her offer to shower.

"Hey!" Kelly's voice came from the street and they both leaned over to see her, "That's a good system, can it bring you food?" She was joking, of course, and dropped a recyclable grocery bag on one of the boards that had been loaded up, "Take a break, get your strength back. There's water in there for you!"

Neither of them had realized how hungry or thirsty they were until they reached inside the bag: four hard-boiled eggs, two out of season apples, a can of asparagus to share, and two plastic handmade canteens of water. Nothing was cold, but that did not seem to matter very much. It took them less than their half hour to devour the contents of the bag.

"Eggs," Glenn muttered through a mouthful, closing his eyes to better savor the taste, "Real, actual eggs."

Abraham grunted his reply, the most emotional he ever seemed to get lately. It was obvious he was enjoying the same treat, he took the time to exchange words.

"I normally hate the yolks" Abraham sighed, "But today they taste damn wonderful."

Glenn stared at him, surprised at having heard Abraham's voice after so many hours of silent panting. He stayed quiet, like a man watching a deer step a little closer to him. The silence stretched from seconds to minutes, but it seemed like it was the right choice to make.

"Do you know why I voted to come here?" Abraham said. Nobody had really discussed their reasons since the day they voted. To be fair, they did not really have the time to do so.

"No," Glenn whispered.

Abraham cleared his throat with a swig from the repurposed plastic jug, "After Eugene failed," that was what he had chosen to call it in hopes of limiting how painful it was to think about, "I realized I don't have a whole lot of time left. I have no purpose," he paused and stared out over the city that still waited to be cleared and expanded into, "There is no hope. Not for us, not to get away from this life. This is just how the world is, we're all just screwed. Every time we wake up, our odds of surviving go down."

Glenn swallowed hard and took a drink, knowing thirst was not the problem, "So why vote to come here?"

"Because even if it was a trap," Abraham stared into his jug, "or they wanted to take our stuff and kill us, at least I'd be around other people who were alive. I thought maybe it would make it seem like some people were gonna survive, maybe our odds weren't that bad."

Glenn considered what Abraham said and shifted to sit next to him. He stayed quiet for a few seconds, not because he was waiting for more from Abraham, but because he was choosing how to phrase his own reasons back at him. It felt like the right thing to do, share and share alike.

"I voted to go because of Maggie," as a statement, it seemed obvious, "I want more for her than what we were doing. If there was any chance of making us all safe again, I wanted to take it. Even if it meant we were gonna die, I wanted to die knowing I had taken every chance I had to give her a better life."

Abraham looked over at him and nodded, "You're a good man, Glenn."

"So are you," Glenn found himself trying to find a way to help Abraham find purpose in what they were doing, "We would never have made it without you."

"Yeah, well. A lot of people with me didn't make it because I was too stubborn and stupid to see what was right in front of me," the self-loathing in Abraham's voice was tragic.

"There was no way you could have known Eugene was a liar," Glenn offered comfort in his words, "You have to stop seeing it like you caused their deaths, it'll eat you alive if you think that way."

"It's not that easy," he grunted.

"I know it's not," Glenn swallowed again, "They followed you because you gave them what Eugene gave you, you gave them purpose. We don't have a whole lot of that anymore. Stop looking at it like they died in vain. They died believing in something. That's more than most of us still alive can say."

They were silent for the rest of their break, but when Abraham got to his feet he clapped a hand on Glenn's shoulder. It was a small gesture, but Glenn smiled at it anyway. They were all broken and desperate to believe in something, sometimes being reminded of that was the only way to pull someone back from the edge.

Across town, Sasha opened the door to the house she was sharing and walked back inside. Tyreese had been sitting on the floor in the living room playing with Judith. He was surprised to see his sister and watched her as she came and sat on the floor.

"What're you doing back already?" he asked.

Sasha shrugged and reached out to wiggle her fingers at Judith. The baby crooned and gave her a sharp, happy sound, "They put me on the Guard team," she produced a wooden chip and handed it to him to look at.

"ASC?" Tyreese raised an eyebrow and flipped it over to look at the 'GRD' burned into the wood on the other side, but that one seemed more obvious.

"Athens Survivors' Colony," Sasha said, "I take a night watch right after sunset by B Gate. It's across town, but they're good enough to give me the day if I work through the night. It's something," she shrugged, "better than keeping watch every night and every day I guess."

Tyreese nodded, "I'm gonna check with Rick and made sure it's okay to drop Judith with their nursery. It doesn't seem right for me to sit around and do nothing."

Sasha smirked without looking at him, reaching into her back pocket and producing another token, "No need. Why take her to the nursery when you can work there?"

Tyreese took the chip and flipped it over, 'N' and 'ASC' on either side. He looked back at his sister and nodded slightly, "I can do a whole lot more than watch kids."

Sasha looked at him now, her face calm and calculating, her eyes narrowed and catlike, "I know, but I told them to put you there for other reasons. Ty, you do what must be done with the weight of the world behind you. Killing and death? That doesn't suit you at all," she leaned back on her hands, crossing her legs in front of her, "You aren't the guy who deals with the killing and death."

"Then what am I?" Tyreese tried to disguise his amused smile, waiting for his sister's judgment.

"You're the guy who brings out life. You're the guy who stops to water a dying flower when fire is raining from the sky," there was no sarcasm in her voice, no malice. Rather, there was admiration, "You love kids. You would lay down your own life if it meant protecting theirs. I told them to put you with the nursery crew because you're the knight in shining armor that place needs. We'd all feel a little safer knowing you were the one watching over those kids."

Tyreese stared at the coin and mulled over her words in his head. If he were still a teenager with a temper and something to prove, he would have been outraged at her for giving him 'women's work', but the truth of the matter was there was no such thing as 'women's work' and 'men's work' anymore. Truthfully, he was touched by Sasha's words. She was right, he reaped more joy from working with the kids at the prison over the other tasks that had been given to him. Back at Terminus, he had killed someone. After they had reached the church, he had pushed to survive. Living in constant fear was exhausting. Tyreese felt purpose around those kids, it gave him something worth protecting.

He held the chip out to her and smiled, "Thank you."

Sasha reached out and squeezed his knee, turning her attention back to the infant. There was no need to discuss their decision to come to Athens, they both knew why they had voted. Tyreese voted to give them all a better future, to give the baby some safety, and to put Carl in a place where he could have a real childhood. Sasha voted because she had nothing left to lose. Bob would not have wanted her to give up, he would have pushed her to keep hoping for something better. She found herself doing that a lot lately, considering things Bob would do or say to keep her going. He had started to serve as her sort of conscience. In his voice, she had heard him say, _Don't give up. If there's a chance, don't give up._ So she had cast her vote the way Bob would have wanted. Without exchanging words, they both had known this about each other.

Maggie followed her partner into the expansion district, adjusting the strap of the messenger bag they had given her nervously. She had received her chip and been assigned to the Salvage Crew, they made up the second wave of people who picked through the houses for anything useful and cleared out any straggling walkers that the Expansion Teams had missed. Around Athens, they just called them "the dead", but the effect of the vernacular was the same. People died, came back, bit other people, those people died, came back, et cetera. There had been no reason to adjust how anybody referred to them. Maggie had enjoyed a smattered array of words people used for them: walkers, biters, chompers, zombies, dead, animates, corpsewalkers. In her hour with the Salvage Crew, she had learned a lot about the way people saw the walkers.

Now, Maggie cautiously opened the front door and crossed her knife over the penlight she had been given. Not that it was dark, but too much light was better than too little. She signaled to her partner, Cara, and the young woman followed her in kind. A quick sweep produced no walkers, meaning the Expansion Team that handled this house had done their job right. They were supposed to report if any straggling walkers were left on the first or second floors. Walkers in the basement were apparently normal, but something about their presence up top was significant. Maggie did not bother to question the order, depending on Rick heavily for survival had taught her to follow and order when given. The reason it was given mattered very little in the moment.

She looked around the house and took in the obvious signs of repair that had been done to the house. Opening a few drawers, she shoved some batteries that may or may not work in her bag, some band aids, a tube of Neosporin, some peroxide, bleach from the kitchen, and two heavy leather jackets. There was no more room in her bag, so she went to deposit her bounty.

Carol was waiting for her in the store that had once been a pharmacy. Now, it was reasonably well guarded and used as a general supply store. She lit up when she saw Maggie, "You're going out there and bringing us stuff?"

Carol had already encountered two of the people they referred to colloquially as 'Scavs', short for Scavengers. These were apparently people who traded what they found for what they needed, they did not live within the walls of the city but Gwen had made an agreement with them that they were welcome to trade freely and come and go as they pleased. It was a bit like seeing mole people coming up to find food, most of them were much dirtier than the rest of Athens' citizens, but they brought good things to trade.

"No," Maggie shook her head, "I run Salvage, they send us to the expansion area and we bring stuff back from the houses."

"Hm," Carol nodded, sorting through the contents of Maggie's bag and dividing it into piles. Another young woman behind the pharmacy counter with her took the items and brought them into the back, "It's not a bad system, actually. They make the city bigger and find stuff to use at the same time. I can't think of something that would work better than this, actually."

"You seen Glenn?" Maggie was a little anxious not knowing where he was right now. She knew he had gone to the Expansion sector, but had not seen him.

Carol shook her head, "Not yet. I'm sure he's fine, though."

Maggie nodded and left the store, knowing Carol was right and yet not able to shake her anxiety completely. They had voted to come here together, especially after the walker in Peterson. She knew why Glenn wanted to come here, he wanted to keep her safe. What Glenn did not know, however, is why Maggie had voted to come. She reached her hand down and touched her stomach gently, suppressing the terrible fear that ran cold in her hands when she did.

Carol watched Maggie go and sighed, folding the leather jackets neatly, "Thanks Karissa," she said to the other girl working with her here. They had assigned her to work here in the pharmacy, help sort the loot from the Salvagers. It seemed there were a few stores like this, mostly because one store did not have enough space to keep everything in an organized way. Nobody was sure who had started the system, but it seemed like everything they had no origin story for became attributed to Gwen. Carol doubted she had come up with the system, but to contradict the people felt like she would be taking something away from them.

Carol looked around the shop and smiled at one of the Scavengers who came in. She was quickly picking up on the details that revealed they status: too many clothes on for the season, a larger pack, and covered in grime from head to toe. The woman silently placed little objects on the counter and Carol paused to run her fingers over one in particular. It was a small, plastic horse figurine with a broken off ear. The Scavenger woman paused and stared at her.

"You like that one?" she asked, her voice hesitant and quiet. These outsiders seemed so foreign, like they had a difficult time communicating with people at all. Carol realized then how lucky she had been to have survived with a group. Surviving alone deprived these outsiders of something essential to human survival. It made sense why they could not stay in the city, but at the same time Carol wished to try and offer them a place anyway. One night in this colony and she could sense its value.

"It's lovely," she said, unable to stop looking at it.

The Scavenger woman eyed her carefully and pushed the base towards her with a single, dirty finger, "You can keep it."

There was a tenderness in the woman's voice that forced Carol to look up at her. In the woman's watery blue eyes she saw a sadness that was deep and penetrating, felt a sense of loss so catastrophic it meant only one thing.

"You lost a child, too?" the woman asked her quietly.

It was the word 'too' that bothered Carol, but she gave a slight nod, "A little girl. Sophia." Saying her name would never get easier. Carol had refused to do what the others had, to push Sophia from her mind. In truth, her daughter was never far from her thoughts. She thought about Sophia every single day and never pushed away reminders of her. It had been a heartbreaking decision to do, keep Sophia in her mind. Some days, it seemed easier to do what everyone else did and just forget. Now was one of those moments where the sense of loss hit Carol like a truck.

"Anna," the woman replied, pushing the base of the horse at her again, "She loved horses. Yours, too?"

"Yeah," Carol said, picking up the small plastic thing to examine it, "she spent an entire Saturday bugging me to let her take riding lessons, but it wasn't an option for us." _For so many reasons, not the least of which was that I'd be beaten for asking,_ Carol thought, but did not say aloud.

"Keep it. Remember her," the woman gave her a smile, the kind shared between two women who had experienced something so great it separated them from all the world around them.

"Thank you," the gesture choked Carol, but she slipped the horse into her pocket and wiped her eyes. It had not occurred to her that she had started to tear up, "What can I get you for the rest of this?"

It was this that brought Carol here, this need to survive at all costs. She was a utilitarian, she would sacrifice the few in order to save the many. The choice to be this way had weighed on her, she had the option to escape the fate she had ascribed herself so many times and yet refused to do so. Utilitarianism was the only way to survive without walls. Being in the prison had afforded her the luxury of being practical and rational instead. When the disease hit, Carol had become the person she had been beyond the walls again: a survivor. She was a survivor in more than one sense, the kind that survived the apocalypse and the kind that survived a brutal husband. Something about that combination had made her the way she was now, calculating and decisive in her sense of preservation for the many.

The moment with the Scavenger woman, whose name Carol had not bothered to learn, reminded her of why she was bothering to survive. She stayed alive for the people she had loved and lost. It was the same reason she had only set up the car as an option. Carol could never have left her people, she needed them the same way they needed her. Nobody else would make the hard choices, but Carol could. If she had left them, then nobody would make those choices and they would all die. All their months of suffering would have been for nothing. Despite her moments of resentment for Rick over exiling her, she could not have conceived to let that happen. Carol chose the best, most rational option to keep the most of them alive.

Rosita paused in front of the mechanic shop and lifted the brim of her had slightly. It had never been repurposed, the building was always an auto shop. She had been used to dealing with the lewd comments and suggestive remarks of mechanics back before the disease, but there was none of that now when she entered she shop.

"Whoa there, hold up, little lady," said a middle aged man who swung himself from the dirty main office, "Let me check your token," he turned it over and passed it back, "You're in the right place. I'm Chuck, come find me if you need anything. Larry back there will give you a project and test you out. If you're any good, we'll keep you. If not, we'll send you back to Admin to be redistributed."

Rosita had to smile at the atypical mechanic names of the two men, the stereotypical nature of it made her feel like laughing. She handed her token to Larry who waved it away and pointed at a busted walkie-talkie.

"Test your metal on that. If you can fix it, we'll keep ya," Larry was a gruff, older man as well with the same no-nonsense attitude of Lyal. Rosita would not have been surprised if they were related.

Without a word, she picked up the radio and opened it up. She spotted the fried circuit in seconds and held it up to Larry, "Where do you keep your parts?"

"Back," he said, offering no further assistance.

Rosita hopped off the stool she had been using and meandered into the back room. She found someone who looked like she might know where to look, "Excuse me, I need a circuit for this thing."

"Take a look in the drawers," the young girl said, much too young to be holding a job in any other context, "We take apart what can't be fixed and save the good stuff."

Rosita rummaged through the drawers until she found what she needed, replaced the circuit, and brought the radio back to Larry. He tested it a few times, 'hmm'ing and 'huh'ing.

He eyed her suspiciously, "Okay then. There's a typewriter that keeps jamming on that table over there, that's your next project. Come find me when you're done."

It must have been the busy work they kept her feeling fulfilled. Rosita hardly noticed half of the day move around behind her. The mechanic shop was dark without electricity, but most of the guys had solar powered lanterns which seemed to help push away the darkness. Larry nudged her and handed her a pair of hard boiled eggs which she happily consumed. He stayed and sat down on the low workbench beside her.

"Happy you came," he offered kindly, though his voice did not seem to reflect the words he spoke, "we can always use more people who can do this stuff."

Rosita nodded without saying much and sank her teeth into the hard skin of a young tomato. Larry paused and looked at her curiously, "You don't say a whole lot, huh."

"I do," she shrugged, "I'm worried about my friend." It was the truth, she was still focused on Abraham. The mechanic work she was doing had been a brief respite from her concerns, but taking a quiet lunch had brought them right back to her.

"What's wrong with 'im?" Had it been so obvious she was talking about a guy? "We've got a doctor, he can go see him."

"Not that kind of worry," she said with a slight laugh.

"Hm," he grunted, "Emotional stuff."

"Yeah, that kind," Rosita could not decide if Larry was simple or just curt.

"This place can be overwhelming for lots of folks. It's not as big as you think, though. Just lots of us shoved together," he looked around at the men all stopped to take their lunches, "There's maybe seventy of us now, though it doesn't seem like that little. Is he havin' a hard time adjusting?"

"No," she shook her head, "He feels betrayed by one of our people," the words just sort of poured out of her without thinking, "We had a lot riding on him and he let us down."

Larry nodded and considered his next statement, "I think we've all been let down like that."

"What do you mean?" Rosita paused and looked at him, but he kept his gaze straight ahead.

"Doctors were supposed to fix this, scientists, politicians, all the people we relied on to keep us safe. Now look at us. Stuck in a town that's really just a hodgepodge of displaced people with no direction sitting in a corral pretendin' the world outside these walls don't exist. We've all been betrayed, but we're still here," Larry finished his tomato and looked over at her, "and focusin' on that betrayal ain't gonna get us any more reconciliation than pretendin' it never happened does." It was not with a measure of disdain for what had been built up around him, but rather a sort of rare blunt honestly that people did not always offer each other.

Rosita nodded, considering it, and looked around her. She had voted to come here for Abraham, to save him, but now that she was thinking about it, maybe it had really been to save herself. Abraham was lost, wandering without a reason to live because it all felt hopeless. Rosita had felt it, too, but had never let herself abandon the belief that whatever they were facing could not have been all there was. Someone offered them salvation when they seemed to need it most, so she took it. So, maybe, it was not because of Abraham that she cast her vote, but for her own sake. To keep herself going, she needed a reason. The idea of Athens was her reason.

The day was ending and the people took time to reinforce their temporary walls, gather arms if they needed to, and head up to the walls to stand watch when they were assigned. A sort of sleepy lull seemed to fall over Athens once the day had been complete. Rosita stretched her legs and turned to Larry, thanking him for the work and giving him good wishes for the next day. He waved her off, no time for frivolity, and she left.

Finding her way back to the Administration building had not been difficult, she deposited her wooden coin into what had been a mail drop box at one point. Newcomers were to return their chips if they wanted to keep their jobs and keep them if they did not. She wanted to keep her job.

Abraham and Glenn walked towards the office, mumbling a conversation she could not quite make out. Rosita waited when she saw them and offered Abraham a smile. To her surprise, he returned it. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her to walk along with them.

"Tell me everything," Abraham said. Rosita stared up and him, not exactly knowing what to say, and let her smile say it for her.


	8. The Sun Fades Out

**A/N: **I won't post spoilers, but I can plainly say I choose to reject the midseason finale so thbppppt. I also decided to rewrite this chapter after rereading it and being unhappy with its delivery and its purpose. This is another short-ish chapter because I like to end where it feels natural. Honestly, I play each one out like an episode in my head and go through each scene carefully, so I try to end all my chapters the same way. I'm toggling two stories so I might slip and merge styles of writing a little bit, call me out if I do! :D

**Chapter 8: The Sun Fades Out**

Rick said his goodbyes to his group, anyone who had gathered in his house to eat that night, and kissed Judith on the head. He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. Night had fallen, the street was quiet except for the occasional tap of footsteps or rumble of conversation outside. He had never noticed how easy it was to hear conversations in other houses without the constant whirring of noise from televisions or cars or radios. It lent an eerie quality to the small fortified town.

Candles had been supplanted in whatever street lamps still remained. Wherever the pattern of lamps was broken there had been a torch pushed into the softening asphalt. Rick walked slowly to A Gate and reached the bottom of the stairs. He knew Gwen was up there, but he could not see her. He recognized the man standing guard at the bottom of the steps and was beginning to believe in the smallness of this place.

"She's waiting for you," Evan said, jerking his head towards the steps.

Rick nodded, but took careful notice of the rifle Evan was holding. He put his hand on the rusted steel pipe railing and walked up slowly. Gwen waited at the top, her back turned towards him and a gun resting against her hip. She was leaning against a post, part of what had been the gazebo, and only turned her head slightly when she heard him coming up the stairs.

Rick said nothing, he just propped himself adjacent to her. Together,they stared straight ahead into the darkness of the forest. He listened to the cicadas chirping in the darkness, the occasional crunch of feet on the road behind him. He waited for her to speak and turned to face her, folding his arms over his chest.

He took in Gwen's profile and realized just how pretty she was. The slope of her nose, the way her braided hair fell down her back, the way the firelight danced shadows along the gentle curve of her neck. For a moment, it was just Gwen in front of him and Athens had disappeared. Someone he barely knew and yet knew so well at the same time stood in front of him.

Finally, Gwen's voice cut through the silence, "I promised you a story, didn't I?"

The flickering light behind them seemed to warm everything about her, "You did," he said quietly.

Gwen sighed and mimicked his stance, facing him. Her eyes were searching briefly before she settled on where to start, "All of this started at the University campus," Rick felt the world fall silent around them, like they were insulated from everything while she spoke, "I was in Savannah when the news broke, my husband was here teaching English for the summer. I was worried, so I came back to Athens to see what was going on, but when got here it was already in shambles. I fought my way to the dormitories and held out with two other faculty members and a handful of students. My husband was in the Languages building and had holed up there with another guy, Terry, and two assistant professors. It took a week before we realized both of us were still alive."

She paused to give a slight, airy laugh. Rick noticed she only ever called him 'husband' and never gave the man a name, but he left it alone.

"It took weeks for us to clear the dorms and the other building, then another few days to figure out how we were going to get to each other. Eventually we did, though. Mostly because of Terry," something in the way she said his name gave the man a sort of darkness, "Terry was a math teacher who had always been kind of quiet. Something about him changed when the disease spread and the dead started coming back, though. He was different, more ruthless. It was what we needed to push on, we owed everything to Terry those first few months. After the dorms and the Languages building had a clear path, we started moving outwards, taking over the rest of the campus. Eventually we took the whole thing, but it came at a price."

Gwen paused again and Rick was careful to say nothing. He had learned less was more when you wanted information from someone. Still, he felt guilty thinking of it as information. Rick was focused on her, something about Gwen drew him in even though it was a simple story. He watched her small hands as she undid her braid and redid it quickly. It was a nervous gesture, but part of him found it endearing.

There was a long silence between her statement and when she continued, Rick could here a slight shudder in her breathing like she was either trying not to cry or preparing to go into battle. He could not stop considering her statements about a husband. Gwen was alone when he met her and had been alone since, he knew how the story would end before she told him.

"Terry was our price," Gwen frowned and turned her eyes to the forest again, "Terry started out as exactly what we needed, he got us a part of the world that was really ours. We conquered it with him. Then, he changed. Something about Terry was _too_ suited for that kind of thing. He thrived on the violence and brutality he could push on people, how unchecked his world had become. At first, we took groups in and people. We helped. Lyal was part of the first wave we took in to live in the college with us and try to make it a sanctuary, that's how we met." Gwen smiled at the thought and thumbed at the handle of her pistol, "People started pushing back against Terry and his methods. He was a ruthless, cold man who took more pleasure in watching people die then he should have." Gwen sighed and wrapped her arms around herself like she was staving off a cold breeze that was not there, "He created a rule when people started speaking out against him: Anyone could challenge Terry and take over leading us, but it was always a fight to the death that determined who won. Terry always had a way of making sure his opponents got the worst weapon."

Rick felt like her story was ending there, she sounded final. He did not want her to stop talking to him or at least telling this story, "What happened to Terry?"

Gwen's expression fell and she seemed uncomfortable, "My husband challenged him. He won, but didn't kill Terry. My husband was much tok compassionate for that. It wasn't about leadership to him, it was just about reform. That's a better motivator than leadership. He let him live and sentenced him to exile. We took him in the woods in a high undead area with no food or weapons and just...left him there."

Rick waited for her to give him more, but she did not seem to want to. He turned his attention to the treeline, "Then your husband took over?" He pushed the subject because he had to. Regardless of his compassion for her or whatever his feelings were, Rick had people to protect and needed the whole story to do that.

"For a while," Gwen felt her throat clamp shut when she had to talk about him. She would tell this story a million times and this part would always have to claw its way out of her, "But..he broke after a while. He snapped in that way that people snap now, where they just stop being them and start being something else. I made a decision, me and Lyal, and I took care of it. When it was over, we told our people and we kept moving forward and taking back the city. After a few more months, we held elections for a new leader and I won by an almost unanimous vote. Now, we are here."

Rick noted how much she had skipped, how many gaps there were, and how much she knowingly was keeping from him. If this were three years ago, he would be an angry cop who wanted the truth. Now, he understood. Secrets were the only commodity left anymore that mean anything and she had so many. Gwen told him what he needed to know about the history of Athens and to understand why she took the measures she did to protect it.

"I'm sorry you lost people," it was intentionally ambiguous, encompassing whatever Gwen had disclosed to him. Everyone lost people, but Rick had considered Carl for a second and decided it was something his son would want him to say.

She looked at him and waited for the inevitable torrent of questions that always followed an interrogation like this, but they never came. Gwen swallowed hard, concerned about counting her chickens before they were hatched.

"Everybody's lost somebody," the statement was calm and collected, but hit Rick on a personal note for some reason. He shrugged it off.

They stood there in silence, watching the forest, and Rick opened his mouth to speak. The noise was cut short by the crack of a gunshot in the woods, so sudden and disarming that neither of them moved for a moment. He reached for her and grabbed her by the arm arm, pulling her down and against him in one rough motion. She was too stunned to speak and twisted herself to try and see behind her. Rick stared into her bewildered face and waited for the second gunshot to follow, but it never did.

They stayed entangled like that for a few minutes before Gwen pushed him away. She pulled the radio from her back pocket and switched channels, "Towers, check in please. Towers, check in."

There was a second of silence and static before voices replied, "Tower one, Edmond." "Tower two, Maria." "Tower three, Sasha." "Tower four, Eric."

Gwen moved to the edge and leaned too far over, pressing the radio button again, "Patrols, check in please." She was trying to stay calm, despite the panic burning in her chest. She felt her heart beating loudly in her ears, her blood rushing through her head so fast she almost did not catch the response from her people.

Rick grabbed her arm and pulled her back from the edge, "Get down!" He hissed. He held his magnum in his hand, unsure when he had grabbed it.

"Marion, Karen, and Isabelle checking in." Came the first three voices.

"Zach, Corey, and Anna checking in."

Gwen held the radio and waited, her stare focused through the floor. Rick felt her tension and leaned in, crouched low beside her. He tried to make out movement in the trees or anything that would give away what was going on out there.

"Lyal, Kelly, Marco please check in," Gwen stared into the radio, willing them to respond. She waited only a few more moments before getting to her feet.

Gwen rushed to the stairs and vaulted over them rather than run down, her feet landing hard on the ground below. A small crowd had gathered by the front gate, some people carrying torches to illuminate the dim area. Rick was only a few steps behind Gwen and nearly collided with her when she stopped running.

She pulled a torch from the ground and held it high over her head, "I'm going into the woods to find out what's happening. Lyal, Kelly, and Marco aren't responding on the radio."

Rick took her arm and pulled her aside, his voice low, "How do you know it's not just a walker they were killing? You're gonna make these people panic."

"You don't know them very well if you think this is going to make them panic," the ferocity in her voice surprised him and she pulled away, "If anyone is willing to come with me, I'm taking two."

Rick turned to the crowd and watched the sea of raised hands. He wondered at it for a moment, not anticipating the show of both loyalty and fearlessness. Gwen looked over at him almost with a sense of pride.

"We protect our own."

Evan pushed through the crowd and jogged towards the two of them, not bothering to shove Rick out of the conversation, "Ma'am, you can't go out there."

"I have to go," Gwen said firmly, "Lyal is my friend, he's family. I'm going out there to find him."

Evan hesitated for a second, wondering if he was about to overstep his bounds, "Gwen, you can't go because if you die, we lose everything. If we lose you, we can't keep this place together. Send someone else out there, someone you trust. We can't survive if you don't come back."

Gwen's stubborn streak pushed her to decline, reprimand Evan, and pick her two companions. She knew he was right, though. If she left and never came back, Athens would die a slow death. Nobody would know how to keep it going, that was all her. Reluctantly, bitterly, she gave him a single nod of acknowledgement and moved around him to address the crowd again.

"I need a team! I need three people to go out there and find Lyal and the others. I have no idea what's happening out there, but I need our people back here," Gwen scanned the hands again and noticed none of them went down, "Who's willing to take on that mission?"

The crowd pushed towards her briefly, then Rick realized it was not towards her but rather people pushing through to come forwards. He was surprised when Glenn and Maggie came out of the crowd, followed by someone he did not recognize. Maggie led the three of them and closed the distance between her and Gwen.

"We'll go," she looked at Rick like she meant to confirm the action with him.

Rick was not ashamed of speaking candidly without taking her off to the side, "You two don't have to do this," he said, reaching out to touch her arm, "This isn't our problem, we can leave tomorrow."

Maggie and Glenn exchanged a look that Rick did not recognize, Maggie smiled and turned back to Rick, "We came here to find something better, make ourselves a home, and stop running. If we're going to do that, we have to be all in. I choose all in."

"Me, too," Glenn echoed, looking from Rick to Gwen. Both of them emanated authority, both of them were leaders, and Glenn had no idea which one was the right one to give his attention to. It was a strange feeling.

"Well, I'm going because Lyal is the closest to a brother I've got these days," said the third man, feeling obligated to say his piece now, "He'd do it for me."

Gwen shared a nod with the man and took the rifle strap from Evan, handing it to him, "He'd go after you in a heartbeat, Gory."

Rick took in Maggie and Glenn, made sure he took careful note of their faces from the wayward strands of hair to the small lines that came with too much sun. He wanted to tell them no, take back his position as their dictator. It would be so easy to make them follow his orders, but it felt wrong. Maggie was right and Rick knew it. If they wanted to be part of this place, they had to actually be a part of it. He took a step back to let them pass.

Gwen whistled to the figure in the tower and the gate started to grind and squeal as it was opene. It was a horrible sound Rick doubted he would ever get used to. The gates opened like a maw, beyond them lay only darkness and uncertainty. For a moment, Maggie considered going back and not venturing out into the unknown for people she did not know. Her feet felt otherwise and she took the first step forwards into the dark forest.

The reconnaissance mission was now underway.


	9. Tried to Sell My Soul

**A/N: **I have not forgotten you, TWD fanfic! I took a break to mourn Beth and be grumpy with TWD which is childish but I don't care. I redid Chp 8 because I felt my last version did not do it justice. I also took more time to decide how I wanted the next few chapters to go because I changed my mind a bunch. Anyway, this is the first of two chapters set in the same night. :D yay.

**Chapter 9: Tried to Sell My Soul**

Maggie walked slowly into the trees, the darkness so thick and oppressive she could not see her hand in front of her face. The only reason she knew Glen and Gory were behind her was the soft rustle of grass under their feet as they followed her. It had been agreed upon that they leave the torches behind and continue on in darkness, light would be too much of a risk.

"Where would they have gone?" Glen asked Gory softly, but the night seemed to carry every word and cast it out along the wind like seeds from a harvest.

"Farmhouse, that's Lyal's usual route. It's about three miles east of here," Gory was less concerned about being silent. He figured anyone who was going to surprise them would not bother doing so this close to Athens, nobody was that dumb.

Maggie thought she could discern the eastbound path on the ground, her eyes slowly adjusting to the lack of light. She gestured for them to follow her and adjusted the strap of her rifle. Glen sent Gory ahead and took up the rear, still not completely trusting anybody from Athens. He was trying, though, because Maggie was trying. She had been right about needing to be all in if they wanted this place to work for them.

They walked quietly through the woods, hesitating only when Gory snapped a twig under his boot. The trio froze and listened intently into the darkness for any sign that they had been overheard. Maggie held her breath, her heart beating in her ears. Nothing. They continued east as slowly and quietly as they had dared. The pace was bad and they were making poor time to the farmhouse, but they were careful and had managed to be as close to silent as they could.

Gory clicked his tongue softly to get their attention and Maggie stopped, letting him close the distance between the two of them. Glen hesitated and leaned close enough to hear what Gory was saying.

"That's the farmhouse," Gory said, so quietly it was almost impossible to hear him. He pointed at a lone building, white with black shutters that were falling off. If it had been daytime, they would have seen the rivers of cracks in the peeling paint, the cluster of broken window panes, and the sagging front porch. In this blackness, they could only make out the integrity of the structure.

There was nothing but silence, a deep and hopeless silence that seemed to radiate from the falling down house. It was obvious that none of the missing patrol had made it inside or was attempting to be found, not at the house anyway. Maggie considered the structure from top to bottom, the black roof to the sagging porch, and tried to recall their own farmstead.

"Where's the cellar?" she asked quietly.

Gory hesitated for a moment and she made out a raise in his eyebrows. He had not thought of the cellar, "Around back. But we don't know who else is here, we should split up and circle around to make sure it's safe."

"If they went into the cellar," Glen said, "Whoever fired the shot might be waiting for them to come back out. Gory's right."

Maggie nodded and tried to make out their faces in the night, "Glen comes with me, we'll head around the front. If there's anyone waiting, they'll be around there."

Gory agreed without a moment's reluctance and disappeared into the underbrush. Maggie let Glen lead her around the edge of the clearing, eyes roaming over the yard and the house. She was the first to spot the figure standing by the pair of double doors leading to the cellar. She grabbed Glen's arm and yanked him down into a crouch with her, silently pointing out the almost invisible figure.

It was a man, apparent by the way his shoulders fell, with a gun propped against his shoulder. It was either a shotgun or a rifle, neither of them could really tell from this distance. He was just standing where he was, right in front of the cellar doors, not moving or making a sound.

Something moved in the pushes behind them and Maggie felt a weathered hand clamp down over her mouth. Glen pulled his knife from its sheath and went to swipe at the man, but another hand on his wrist stopped him. Lyal was hardly visible to them in the inky blackness, but Glen caught the slight shake of his head and put the knife back where it belonged. He slowly moved his hand away from Maggie's mouth and she whirled around to see who it was. When it registered, she tried to relax.

Glen went to open his mouth, but Lyal placed a finger against his own lips to indicate silence. He swept his finger in a slow circle to indicate there were others in the surrounding area. Another motion urged them to follow him between two thick bushes covered in thorns. Maggie winced as the tiny little things scraped across her skin and she felt the burning sensation of tiny abrasions along her bare arms. They followed Lyal until he stopped and brushed away foliage dried out needles from a piece of plywood. The plywood had been painted a long time ago to blend in with the surrounding forest, but now it was slightly faded even in this deep dark night. The plywood revealed a haphazard hole dug in the ground like a shaft that descended into an even worse darkness than what surrounded them.

"In," Lyal whispered softly. His voice was so husky it could have easily been mistaken for the slithering of a serpent in the dried leaves.

Maggie hesitated and looked to Glen for confirmation, unsure about whether to trust him or not. Glen went first, bracing himself with his arms and dropping feet-first into the hole. It was not very deep, but it made his feet sting when he landed on the ground below. He wanted to call up and let her know it was safe, but it was too risky. Instead, he moved aside and waited for her to follow him. She did, inhaling sharply when she landed. Finally, Lyal landed with a heavy thud behind them. Maggie and Glen watched him, waiting patiently, but not sure what they were waiting for exactly.

Lyal pulled something from his belt and they heard a crackling sound, then a burst of soft blue light illuminated the hole. It was not a hole, but a tunnel leading in the direction of the farmhouse. The glowstick was soft and dim, but provided enough light for them to see without fear of being caught. Lyal looked at them careful and grunted, reaching out to tug on a rope that had not noticed hanging from the lip of the hole. He pulled at it lightly and they heard the sporadic grating of the plywood on the surface as it sealed the hole again from below.

"Come," he said impatiently and walked down the tunnel with a sense of purpose.

It was narrow and uneven, but wide enough and tall enough for the large man to move freely through. Eventually, they came to a bulge in the tunnel, but it was not the cellar. Lyal would not risk going there, he was not that stupid. The bulge had been carved out as a midpoint between the exit and the cellar just in case of something like this.

"I was holed up in that house for months," he said quietly, less afraid of being found out here, "We were surrounded by undead. The only way out was like this, so we carved it out by hand with trowels and gardening tools, whatever we could find. Now, Athens uses it as a safehouse."

Maggie and Glen said nothing for a moment, then Maggie remembered something, "Gory-"

"Is a traitor and a liar," Lyal growled, "He volunteered to come along on this charade?"

"What?" Maggie said.

"He sold my patrol route out. He doesn't know about this place, only the higher ups do," Lyal sat down on the ground and scowled, "That little snake. I didn't know it was him until Terry said something only Gory knew."

"Wait," Glen said, holding up a hand to stop him. He took two steps towards Lyal, "What's going on? We were sent to find you, there was a gunshot-"

Lyal stopped him with a raise of his hand and sighed heavily, "The gunshot took out one of us, knife got the other. Sit, I'll explain," he motioned for them to sit on the ground with him and recounted the story of Terry for them, "He's the one up there with the shotgun. Gwen's husband let him go and we all thought he was dead until about two weeks ago. That's why the patrols are doubling up."

"What does that have to do with you?" Glen asked carefully. He was not sure how the story mattered to Lyal held up in a cave that nobody knew about.

"He wants Gwen. Specifically, he wants Athens, feels it's owed to him somehow," Lyal sighed, "If I had to guess, he's learned taking me out will cripple Gwen or make her weak enough to give up without a fight," he looked at them and took in their faces, "I'm sorry you got dragged into this. You came to us hoping for a better life and I'm worried we might be making it worse."

Maggie considered his statement for a moment and frowned thoughtfully. He was right about them coming to Athens for a better life, but wrong about making it worse. After all, they had already lost their home, friends, family. The last item in her mental list made her heart ached with longing for Hershel, Maggie always underestimated how much she missed her dad.

"No," she said, "You didn't make it worse. Walkers aren't the thing that's trying to kill everyone for what they've got so they can take it for themselves. What do we do now?"

Rick sighed when he reached the top of the watchtower and walked slowly towards Gwen. He made his footsteps loud and deliberate so he would not startle her.

"Staying up all night worrying doesn't help anyone," he said quietly, leaning against the railing next to her, "You're no good to anyone if you're too exhausted to think straight."

Gwen saw him in her peripheral, but kept her eyes on the forest, "Two of your own are out there. You're telling me you could walk down those steps and go sleep like a baby?"

Rick weighed her words in his head and nodded, "That's fair, probably not." He was trying to be comforting, a leader maybe, something more than a newcomer to a new community. Rick was used to saying things to keep people going, but it was becoming clear that Gwen was not receptive to that kind of talk. He respected that.

"Lyal's all I've got left," Gwen tried to keep the fear out of her voice, "I don't know what I'd do with this place if he died."

He ruminated on her words and considered all that had happened to him and his people in the last few days. They had gone from a barricaded music store and a dilapidated church to a fortress-city with a house to call their own. It was a strange turn of events.

"You'd go on," he finally said, "You'd keep going because these people need you to go on. Nowhere is ever really safe anymore, but we do the best with what we've got and you've got more than anyone I've seen for a while."

Gwen felt the twitch of a wry smile at her lips and met his eyes, "I think the world has changed and we need to redefine the word 'safe'."

Rick nodded and kept his eyes on her, "I'll take watch if you want to go rest. If I see anything, I'll come get you."

She made a 'tsk' noise and shook her head, "You're no good to me if you're exhausted."

It was the first time in a long while anyone had been playful with him, the antic took Rick by surprise and he let out a soft, genuine laugh, "I'm no good to you anywhere but in this tower."

"I thought you liked to farm?" Gwen asked coolly. She had enjoyed the sound of a real laugh coming from Rick, he did not seem like the type to smile much. Nobody really was anymore, that was the way of the world now.

"I'm good at farming," he waved the notion away with a nonchalant hand, "but my people are out there. I can't just go downstairs and take a nap."

Gwen smiled, broad and real, and let out a laugh that reminded Rick of a breeze in the spring cherry blossom trees. She nodded concession and turned so she could rest her back on the railing. She reached out and patted his arm, letting her fingers linger for just a moment too long and slide down off the fabric of his shirt. He felt each individual second like it was synced with the thump of his heart in his chest.

"We can trade shifts. I can catch some sleep here, we can switch in a few hours," Gwen was willing to compromise on the matter. It was a rare attribute for anyone these days, let alone the leader of a stronghold.

Rick's eyes searched her face for a moment and it took him a while to find it, but he did. Gwen was trying to ignore the deep anxiety and frustration she was feeling, she masked it with good cheer and helpfulness. She must have let her guard down for just a moment because Rick caught a glimpse of the dark, crushing sadness that was so well hidden behind her eyes. She blinked, it was gone.

"I'll wake you up in a few hours," Rick agreed. He watched Gwen as she shrugged off her jacket and folded it under her head. She curled up and closed her eyes, taking only a few minutes to settle into the rhythmic breathing of sleep.

Rick slid his arms out of the sleeves of his leather coat and was careful to make little noise when he crossed the unlevel boards of the tower floor. He covered her shoulders with his coat and went back to watching the treeline for any signs of movement. Gwen never slept deeply, not anymore. She felt the gesture, the pressure of the jacket, and the feel of well-worn sheepskin on her skin. Suddenly, her nose was filled with the smell of dirt, the stale scent of exertion, and something she could not place. It was something unique to Rick, almost cinnamon or maybe cloves, Gwen could not decide. Either way, it was comforting.

Lyal grunted softly with the effort of hoisting Maggie out of the hole. She grabbed onto the solid ground and pulled herself up the rest of the way. Lyal pulled Glen up behind her and motioned for silence. He gestured to indicate they were surrounded, reminding them to stay silent.

"_There's a house a half-mile from here," _Lyal had said before they climbed out of the hole_,_ "_Terry's got people around this place, we've got to move. Gory doesn't know about the second house, but I do. You stay near me and you stay silent."_

There was a shuffling sound followed by a strangled gurgle and Maggie thrust her knife to the hilt into the skull of the walker. They kept on moving in silence under the cover of the trees. Lyal had disappeared into a bush when Glen felt a hand descend on his shoulder. He whirled around and saw Gory, a half-smile barely visible in the darkness.

"I can't see inside the house, you think Lyal is even in there?" It took Glen a moment to realize Gory had no idea where they had been for the past forty minutes. Glen's mind raced for a response, he could not decide between playing along and exposing Gory.

"_Gory's the only one who's been on these runs to the farmhouse with me. Our higher-ups know it exists, but they don't know where to find it. Gory is the only one other than Gwen. He sold me out, he lied when he came to Athens to get inside and poison the well, so to speak. Gory is a serpent,"_ _Lyal had spat at Gory's name, angry and frustrated._

Glenn chose play along, "I'm not sure. That guy isn't moving or anything, I doubt Lyal stuck around. He probably snuck out the back, we're running a wider perimeter to check."

"Where's Maggie?" Gory said. Glen saw it, he saw the flicker of exposure in Gory's face and knew Gory was aware they were on to him.

Maggie's hand clamped over Gory's face and she pulled back to keep him silent. She wasted no time, driving her knife into the back of his neck. Killing Gory for his betrayal felt right, killing anyone for their betrayal felt right. Still, Maggie wanted to be sick anyway. She knew she had done what was necessary, but killing people was much different than killing walkers. After Terminus, she had just forced herself to learn that sometimes this was the only way.

Lyal backtracked through the bushes and opened his mouth to speak, but he caught sight of Gory's body and closed it again. His mouth drew into a frown under his beard and his eyes narrowed, "Gory was vermin. You gave him a better death than he deserved."

Maggie heard it in his voice, the attempt to confirm her belief she had done what was right. She appreciated it, deciding in that instant Lyal was a good man. Glen heard a rustle he could not identify and motioned for them to keep moving. Lyal led them through the brush and paused when he heard the low rumble of voices. A skeletal hand of a partial torso grasped for his pant leg, but he dove his knife through the soft skull and rendered the walker useless. He held up his hand for Maggie and Glen to stop with him, trying to hear what the voices were saying on the wind.

"-thinks he left….not far…go back?"

Voices Lyal did not recognize. This should have brought him comfort that there were no more of his own selling out their community, but it did not. It meant Terry had begun to recruit people. Where was he keeping them? How did he find them?

Lyal shook the questions out of his head and ignored them, there was no time to toodle about asking questions. He waited another moment more and heard the rumbling voices recede, lifting a hand for Glen and Maggie to follow again. He cleared a decent enough path through the unkempt forest and kept heading west. They stayed off the roads and main paths, using the woods to obscure their sounds and their trail.

The small red brick building seemed to fade into view in front of them. The only way Maggie could tell it was red was because Lyal told them it would be, in the nighttime darkness it just looked like a tinted gray. The building seemed quiet and whole, no windows broken and the walls were still intact. Lyal's arm shot across Maggie's chest when she started to move towards the place.

"No," he whispered harshly, "Wait."

Maggie held her breath, feeling the intensity of the situation more clearly than she should have. In fact, she was feeling every emotion more sharply than she had been. That sat ill with her and she cursed herself for being careless. Reflexively, she guarded her torso against what had already taken root weeks ago.

Lyal motioned for them to stay hidden and moved through the brush like a ghost. He disappeared from their sight somehow and they knew he would remain there until he wanted them. Lyal crept towards a large tree that looked lonely and black in the darkness, until Glen noticed the slight jut of an elbow against the tree's silhouette. He wondered for a moment how Lyal had seen it, having classified the older man as feeble without even realizing it. Immediately, Glen was ashamed of himself for it.

Lyal stood up without the man so much as hearing him breathe. He slid his knife into the man's neck, cutting through the jugular and into his windpipe to stop his ability to scream. With a hard jerk of his hand, he pulled the blade out again and watched the man crumple to the ground. He kicked his shoulder until the body turned over and examined the face.

Maggie was at his elbow, quiet as a churchmouse, "Who was that?"

"A ghost," Lyal said with a frown, "A man we left to die a long while ago. We used to exile them, leave them to live or die as the natural order saw fit. Then one tried to come back, so we changed how we handle prisoners and traitors."

"Prisoners and traitors?" Maggie hissed. She had not heard about this before.

Lyal nodded, "Men and women who happen to be around when a lot of people die too often to be natural. You know how people are now, the bad ones never do their own dirty work. Only the really bad ones do that."

Maggie looked to Glen and they shared an expression of understanding. It had plagued their group as well, the men who brought others to die rather than doing it themselves. This phenomenon was common among all groups, no matter how barricaded. It was the cost of taking in people, but Athens had found a way to manage that cost and curb it before it became too much. Glen was not sure if he admired it or hated it.

"Come," Lyal turned and walked carefully to the house, "He was the only one."

Glen followed Maggie, keeping her safe in the middle of their march. He looked around cautiously and checked for movement along the brush, any sign of lurking sentries, but saw nothing. He only let go of the breath he was holding when Lyal locked the door behind him.

"What do we do now?" Glen asked, tightening his lips into a thin line. He hated this, he wanted to get Maggie back to Athens, behind the high walls, back to the only point of relative safety he had felt in months.

Lyal sighed and looked out the window of the small, old house, "In an hour, we make our way to another house. We hop from place to place and keep to the woods until we reach the gates. We don't stay here or sleep, if they had a sentry then they'll expect him to be returning. Don't get comfortable, we move in twenty minutes."


	10. Bound Together

**A/N:** So now I'm out of school forever basically (yay) and I can ACTUALLY update REGULARLY. I have two stories I am toggling between, both of which are satiating my writing itch now that I graduate. I'll try to pop a new chapter up once or twice a week now that I have no 45 page thesis papers due.

**Chapter 10: Bound Together**

Maggie ran from the house, she broke into a sprint when she made it to the road. Glen was only a few paces behind her, the strong limp in his leg slowing him down by a few paces. She heard the strangled shout of a man behind them and took the chance to look over her shoulder, worried for a moment Lyal had stumbled and fell. Lyal had stopped, but it was to rip the shaft of an arrow out of his thigh. The man with the bow was running right for him, Maggie remembered what he had said and did not go back for him.

"_You run. You run as fast as you can and you get back to Athens, don't even for a second stop and turn around for anything," Lyal said in a harsh whisper. He knew. Maggie could see it in his face that he knew something was going to happen. _

She considered for a moment if Lyal had seen the man with the bow in the trees, but decided quickly he had not. He was not that kind of person to knowingly let Glen take an arrow to the calf.

_Come to think of it_, Maggie thought, _I don't really know what kind of man Lyal is._

They had taken off immediately after the door had opened. Lyal had instructed them to keep to the road and run straight. At the junction, make a left and it would run them right to the front gates.

Nobody had seen or heard the man in the brush from what Glen and Maggie could tell. All Glen heard was the hiss and thud of an arrow in the dirt behind him and he forced himself to move faster. There was a long groan behind him and Glen glanced backwards. All he could make out in the darkness was Lyal limping aggressively and clutching his thigh, seeing the shaft jutting out of the muscle took a second longer. Glen opened his mouth to shout something, but Lyal waved them on and slowed down. He slipped off the path, taking advantage of the just-after-midnight blackness, and lunged at the bowman when he came into view.

One last arrow hissed with a gentle twang of bowstring and landed with a sickening thump in Glen's calf just before he hit the asphalt. Glen gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached and tried to push out the searing pain that ripped through him with every step. He grabbed his leg and pushed it forwards, forcing it to keep up with the rest of his body. He had the brief thought that if this had been two years ago, he would have screamed bloody murder and been on the ground in tears. But this was not two years ago, this was two years into hell on earth and an arrow through the calf was a blessing compared to a hundred other things.

Lyal's hands were around the throat of the anonymous man, flailing and hitting wildly beneath him. Lyal was heavy, thick and roped with muscle from two years of survival, and he used that to his advantage. Asking questions would have been nice, but he felt no need. He knew who had sent the man, he knew who was in the woods, and he knew who had given his route up. Now two of his friends were dead and two others had risked their lives to come recover him. Lyal felt the tide of rage wash over him, surge in his throat like acid, until it replaced the blood in his veins. Adrenaline-fueled strength brought one hand off the man's throat and down to the arrow in his thigh. He tore the shaft free in one motion and brought it down again, violently thrusting it into the bowman's windpipe and standing up in one swift motion. Lyal resolved to ignore the pain in his thigh and broke into a run after Glen and Maggie. Against his orders, they had paused to wait for him. Part of him was grateful, the other annoyed that they had disobeyed him.

Maggie waited until Lyal was close enough and then turned to keep running. None of them knew how they had the strength or the endurance to run for as long as they already had, none of them cared. All that mattered was that they were moving and could make out the fail glow of the city behind the wall already.

After two hours, Rick had shaken Gwen awake and moved back to give her space. People woke up violently, sometimes maiming others. That was the price of surviving, nobody remembered what a good night's sleep felt like anymore. Gwen rustled and sat up, rubbing one of her eyes, and took a deep breath. She felt rested, but never really felt like she slept. Something in her kept her alert of her surroundings even when she was fading from exhaustion. She had heard Rick move around, hush Evan and dismiss him, heard him raise a rifle scope to his eye and peruse the woods, and heard his anxious sigh when he set it down again. All of this, and she still felt rested.

"Your turn," Rick said after a few moments.

Gwen nodded and got to her feet. She handed him back his jacked and placed a hand on his shoulder with a tired pat. They traded space and Gwen fixed herself to the edge of the railing, feeling only slightly more secure when she swung the loaded rifle over her shoulder. She said nothing to him, just turned her back and stared at the forest.

Rick did not lay down immediately, he stared at the back of her head and took in her now messy post-nap braid and the shadow of muscle around the side of her neck. She was rigid like a stone sentry, poised to take action at a moment's notice. Despite all that he had seen and endured, a woman like Gwen still surprised him. He knew it was sexist, but that was what the rural south did to someone before the outbreak.

He lowered himself down and propped his back against one of the mismatches posts, reaching out to tuck her jacket behind his head. Rick inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. He thought he could smell jasmine, which was strange since it was out of season. He opened his eyes for a moment and readjusted Gwen's jacket, then he felt the scent hit him again. He realized right before he slipped into the limbo of almost sleep that it was Gwen who must have smelled that way.

In his dream, Rick was standing in a field. The whole field was illuminated by a sun he could not see, a wind he could not feel moved the low stalks of wheat that stretched for miles and miles. Behind him, there was a forest dense and dark. Clouds seemed to swirl over the forest sky, but still the field remained sunny and bright. Something in the dark between the trees was growling, loud and wolfish, and it made him take a step backwards. He felt his foot slip and he tumbled back, but never fell. Instead, something stopped his fall and pushed Rick back to standing. He turned slowly and saw Lori, standing in her wedding dress. But it was not her wedding dress, it was her purple plaid shirt and jeans. Her hair was whipping around her face, it gave her an aura of wildness that seemed to pull him closer to her. Lori stared at Rick for a moment, face sullen, but her eyes seemed alight with love or sympathy or sadness. In dreams, nothing was ever plain.

The growling came again from the forest, louder and more violent. Lori took a few steps around Rick towards the dark trees, but he reached out and stopped her, "Wait."

His voice echoed in his own ears. Lori's hand, cold and warm at the same time, moved his fingers off of her arm, "You can't stop it, Rick. It's coming."

"What's coming?" he asked. Rick knew subconsciously he should be crying, desperately trying to keep that image of Lori in his mind, but in his dream it felt like she had never died. He felt like she had always been there.

"What's next is coming," she said, her lips never moved but her voice was in his mind clear as day, "What's coming is next."

Again, the vicious growling came from the woods. It made Rick shiver deep into his bones, a guttural shiver of true and utter fear. He turned to face the dark, looming forest and realized the stormy clouds had gathered over the field now. Lori stood beside Rick, not close enough to touch, neither of them speaking. Someone was running out of the woods now, a figure that seemed to move in sharp, magnifying motions with a sense of desperation and terror.

It took Rick a moment longer to realize it was Gwen running away from the woods towards them. It was not Gwen as he knew her, it was Gwen in a ball gown such a pale pink it was almost white. She had gathered the voluminous, flowing skirts so she could run away from the trees, her long hair carefully curled and seeming to float behind her as she ran. A small tiara glittered on her head, but he had no idea why he knew it was there. Rick looked at Lori, Lori looked at Rick. She smiled gently and motioned to Gwen with a long, elaborate sweep of her arm. Now she was wearing it, the long white satin dress he had always pictured her in.

"You know what to do," Lori said calmly.

And Rick did know what to do. Gwen was running for him, her hands were on his shoulders and she shook him violently. She was not in the ball gown now, she was in the shirt and jeans he had seen her in at the watchtower, a long braid draped over her shoulder. Gwen's voice was strange, like it was hitting him from all directions when she spoke. She shook him again and opened her mouth. He had been hearing her voice, but did not hear any words. Finally, Gwen's desperate expression seemed to focus all of her voices into one and it hit him sharply, like a slap.

"_Wake up!"_

Rick lurched forward with a terrible gasp and realized Gwen had actually been shaking him. She jumped backwards and then ran to the edge of the watchtower, "Open the gates! Open the gates!"

Rick was disoriented, he looked around wildly and it took a moment for his surroundings to set in. He recalled the night in images, but he could not remember his dream. He knew something was important about it, but had no idea what it had been. Gwen was beside him again and hauling him to his feet.

"They got him. Maggie and Glen are coming in now. They've got Lyal," her voice was trailing off as she ran down the stairs, leaping over the railings again.

Gwen had spotted them, faint at first, three faint points moving rapidly along the broken asphalt. She had lifted the rifle and stared down the scope. Two of them were limping, one of them was running fine. In her bones, she knew it was them without being able to make out their faces. She had woken Rick immediately and shouted into her radio to open the gates. The A Gate tower was manned by two other men with rifles, Carlos was winding the winch to open it, and a handful of men and women had made a line at the entrance, a few of them holding up rifles, some holding up handguns, and one with a large club.

Gwen did not consider that they were running for a reason, she was just excited to see them all. Finally, she came to her senses and slowed down her pace, realizing that something was coming in behind them if they were too slow. She kicked herself and sprang into action. Gwen shouted commands and broke up the line. Two groups, one on each side, each prepared to fight if they needed to. She had sent Rick's companion, the dark-skinned woman with the katana, to go back to their housing assignment and get everyone upstairs to the attic. A few other runners were sent to warn the residential areas and two or three of their guards returned to their towers with backup.

"All towers," she spoke into the radio, "Be on your guard, do not leave your post. Repeat, do not leave your post. Double up and stay alert, you shout as soon as you see something. Nothing is too small to report back, over."

"_Roger." _crackled voice after voice, twice as many as usual.

Rick was at the foot of the stairs by the time Gwen had thought about him. He was watching her send out orders and had missed the confirming not he gave Michonne when Gwen gave her an order. Michonne knew better than to be annoyed by it, it was not personal. Gwen had been running this stronghold for months, it never really occurred to her that she was not in control of every inhabitant.

Michonne jogged up the stairs of the surprisingly familiar craftsman home and opened the door quickly. She said nothing, but heard the scrape of chairs as everyone came to see who it was. Daryl met her eyes and nodded, having seen the jogging groups of guards in the window, and began herding everyone upstairs.

"Go on, get up there. Find someplace safe and stay quiet," he felt silly telling them what to do, but sometimes that was enough to reassure all of them that they were going to be okay.

Beth waited at the bottom until everyone had gone upstairs, bringing up the rear behind Tyreese and Judith. Daryl reached out and grabbed her by the wrist. Beth hesitated when she turned back. She could not recall ever really touching him. They had laid close together on the ground, had hugged, had always seemed to make contact in high emotional situations, but now this was not a touch out of heightened emotion. Daryl had grabbed her to convey worry, just for a moment, and then let her go and follow them upstairs.

"I'm going out there," Daryl said roughly to Michonne, "Rick ain't back yet."

"I'm going with you," Michonne followed him, "They're opening the gates, I think Maggie and Glen are back. Gwen sent double guards out to man the towers, though."

"That can't be good," he said, breaking into a jog when they hit the road.

The only sound that filled the basin of the city entrance was that horrible screeching that came with the gate. Daryl tried not to let it get under his skin, but it gave him goosebumps anyway. He hated that sound. He spotted Rick, tucked against a wall with his magnum drawn, and broke into a crouch until he reached him.

"Glen and Maggie back?" he whispered.

"Yeah," Rick replied, "Gwen said they're running from something though, says all this is a precaution."

"Everything is a precaution until it ain't a precaution no more," Daryl sighed and steadied his crossbow. He heard the familiar scrape of Michonne's katana, now nose down in the dirt and free of its sheath.

The air seemed to hang, still and suspended. There was no sound after the gate had clanged into place, fully open. Maggie had watched the mess of metal open like a beacon. Where it had looked like an angry maw when they left, now it looked every bit like the sanctuary it was. She felt her second wind and pushed her legs harder. Glen had found a rhythm with his limp, galloping fervently along the broken road. He felt it, too, that feeling of sanctuary where there was once apprehension and dread. Athens looked like a beacon waiting for them. He could make out the clusters of people off to the side, suddenly grateful for a large population in a confined space. They would be ready if anyone was still chasing them, but Glen was pretty certain nobody was anymore.

Lyal grunted and stumbled a few times, sporting the conscious consideration that he might in fact be too old for this world. Still, he forced himself to ignore the pain in his chest, the throbbing ache in his leg, and the sticky, stiff blood dried on his leg. Athens was there, Athens meant safety and guns. They would need both of these things if he had been correct. Still, Lyal felt something was wrong. It was nothing in the woods, nothing behind them or in front of them, but something in himself. He squeezed the wound on his leg and frowned, worried about what that feeling might be implying.

Maggie half collapsed, half rolled through the gates. She fell to her knees, rolled over once or twice, and lay on her back. Her eyes were closed, her chest was heaving, her whole body was sweltering in the humid summer night and the impossibly long run she had just undertaken. She heard Glen fall to his knees in the dirst behind her and heave like he was going to be sick. Maggie tried to care that Glen might actually vomit on her, but she was too exhausted to care.

Lyal stumbled and fell against one of the guards that reached out for him. He turned his face up to the A Gate watchtower, "Close it!" was all he could manage.

Gwen's voice sounded from somewhere, "Close the gate! Close it now!"

The squealing was agonizing and seemed to take forever, but eventually there was a clang of metal on metal and they all knew it was shut. Maggie was not sure when Abraham had come over to her, but he had crouched and picked her up like a doll.

"Where's the damn hospital in this place?!" Abraham shouted. She could hear someone directing him, but was too frazzled and exhausted to think about it. All of a sudden, Maggie felt the familiar swaying feeling that came with behind carried.

Daryl reached down to help Glen to his feet and swung his friend's arm over his shoulder. Daryl moved with Glen and acted as a crutch, following Abraham and Maggie. Lyal was more difficult to move, someone had brought a stretcher and laid him down on it. Rick had picked up one end and Evan the other, they made up the end of the strain to the hospital.

Hospital was not the right word for it, though. It was a repurposed nurse's office at the University that extended into the weight room beside it. All of the equipment was cleared out and there were rows of run-down cots separated by old curtains strung up from the ceiling. They had a medical staff, though, much to Abraham's surprise that resembled a hospital enough to give the facility that name. Gwen had mentioned doctors and nurses, but he had never actually believed her.

Now, Abraham believed her. There were three general practitioners and one surgeon, plus a team of four nurses. The medical supplies were questionable and sometimes homemade out of old sheets or other scraps of fabric, but they had enough to more than care for two arrow wounds and a surprisingly exhausted runner.

Abraham laid Maggie down on one of the beds and let the nurse check her temperature and her pulse. She ran a quick survey over Maggie's body and pressed down on commonly injured areas. The woman was in her early twenties, probably a nursing student, and had a kind smile and a good bedside manner. She touched Abraham's hand gently when she wanted him to let go of Maggie's wrist.

"I've got her, you don't have to worry," her eyes sparkled calmly and Abraham found her voice soothing. She took Maggie's wrist and washed down the crook of her elbow with a scrap of cloth soaked in hot water. The woman slid an IV needle into her and attached it to a mounted bag of saline.

One doctor fussed over Glen, irrigating the wound with some cleaning solution that made him shout. It was the first time Glen had exhibited pain over his wound. The doctor was unconcerned with the cry of pain and continued on his way, inspecting the wound and cleaning it without regard for Glen's pain threshold.

"If I don't clean it, it'll get infected. We've got a lot of supplies, but not enough to handle a round of sepsis. I'm sorry this hurts, but it's gotta be done," the man said absently. Bedside manner mattered less to him, especially now. He threaded a needle with surgical thread and started stitching the wound once the bleeding had subsided.

Glen ignored the throbbing heat of the wound and looked up at one of the kindly nurses, "Maggie." Was all he could manage.

"She's fine, dehydrated, but she's fine. They're both fine," the nurse patted him gently.

Glen nodded and lay his head down on the pillow, feeling the pressure of a hand on his back. He opened his eyes again and looked up into Rick's face, "We went all in."

Rick crouched to meet his eyes and took Glen's face in his hands, "Yeah you did," He let Glen go and placed a hand on his shoulder, "We can talk about what happened tomorrow. You'll sleep here tonight."

Gwen shouted in protest as she was pushed out of the only sealed off room in the nurse's station, outraged and angry that she was being sent away from Lyal.

"Ma'am," the doctor with terrible bedside manner said coolly, "he got it worse than they did, we need to take care of it and I can't risk infection. You're carrying enough germs to kill an army if I let you in there. Let me do my job, you do yours."

Gwen seethed and roared in frustration, stomping to sit hard on the only available chair. She scowled at him and folded her arms, imitating a petulant child for a moment. She was terrified, more terrified now that the doctor had said what he did. Something twisted in her gut and, despite their return, she knew something was irrevocably wrong.


	11. Hard Times

A/N: I want to write lots and lots about the group, but sometimes it's hard since my main plotline centers around Gwen and Rick. I'm trying, though! As always, barrage me with ideas or criticism when you see something that should be fixed :D

Chapter 10: Hard Times

Tara sat down hard on the floor of the store room and ran a hand across her forehead, "This is stupid, why d'we have to keep working? There's obviously people out there trying to get in here. We should be doing something about that, not stacking canned vegetables."

The man who had been training her, Colin, stopped in his work to look her over. He could not have been more than a few years older than Tara, he stood a head and a half over her with a mop of unkempt blond hair and dark brown eyes. He stared at her, annoyed, and tightened his lips in a thin line.

"What if we get surrounded, they siege us, and we need food and supplies? What then?" Colin did not hide his irritation with Tara, "Every job in Athens is important, every job matters. Nobody is too proud to stock shelves and nobody is too good to clean stalls. Do your job."

Tara frowned, embarrassed, and grumbled something Colin could not hear and she was not entirely certain of. She got to her feet and thrust out her hand to him, "I'll go to the agriculture center and get more cans."

Colin frowned at her and instinctively grabbed at the keys in his pocket, "No offense, stranger, but I don't trust you as far as I can throw you."

Tara felt her shoulders slump with defeat. All she wanted was to be useful, but Colin was making her feel like an anchor dragging him into the sea. He followed her out to the truck and motioned for her to climb in the passenger side. Though Athens was not very large, it was enough distance and there was enough produce to need a truck to transport it. The engine roared to life and Tara heard the squeal of gears shifting in the old pickup as Colin forced the shifter into place. The road rumbled and bounced her all over the cab, but something about being in a truck going to get work done made her feel normal.

"So," Tara asked, breaking the strained silence, "Where are you from?"

"Small suburb of Savannah," Colin replied shortly. He did not ask her anything in return, but had a feeling she was going to tell him anyway.

"I'm from outside Macon. I stayed with my sister, my niece, and my dad for a while when all this first went down. They died though," she knew it should be difficult to talk about them. Something about this world dictated loss in everyone's lives. To mourn her family would feel selfish, so she did not.

Colin grunted his response and tried to bring quiet back to the cab. Tara refused to let him do it, "How'd you get to Athens?"

"I walked," he said. Colin knew that's not what she was asking, but he was not the kind of man who talked much before the outbreak. Especially after, he talked even less.

Tara laughed amiably and took his statement as whimsically as possible, "Just you?"

Colin debated if he should talk to her or not, if only so she would shut up. He took a deep breath like he was preparing for battle, "No. My wife came and my brother in law. They died on the way though, Gwen found me before she became the leader of this place and brought me back to help build it."

"What's Gwen's deal anyway? What's her story?" Tara never seemed to phrase anything with subversive intent, she was always genuinely interested in knowing the answers to her questions. Even though he did not know her well, Colin knew that much about her.

He shrugged, "Dunno all of it. I was here when her husband Kevin went crazy, I voted for her after she handled it. She's a tough son of a bitch, I can tell you that. Lord knows nobody else had the balls to do what she did."

Tara was puzzled, she leaned her elbow against the edge of the window, "What did she do?"

"Killed him. It was the only way," Colin shrugged.

"She killed her own husband?" Tara's voice betrayed both her bewilderment, concern, and her feeling of the unthinkable. Gwen had killed her own husband and he was not even bitten, that felt like a violation of some sacred and unspoken code.

"What else could she have done," Colin turned the creaky wheel and pulled into the pickup station at the back of the long, large agriculture building built into the campus, "There's two kinds of crazy, Tara," he held up a finger with each point to illustrate it, "There's the crazy that can be fixed by a good slap around the head and there's the crazy that gets so deep in your bones it's like your own blood. Austin was the second kind of crazy. Gwen did the right thing and if you ever pretend she didn't then I'll make sure you get thrown outta these walls for good. Things're different in this world, Gwen did what she had to do just like the rest of us. She's a good woman."

Colin ended the conversation by sliding out of the cab of the pickup. Tara followed him, her pace slow and demure. She could not stop thinking about what it must have been like before Gwen took over, how insane this place must have been. The thought sent a shiver down her spine with the images her mind had conjured.

She helped Colin push up the rusted shut door of what had once been a loading bay for livestock, now used to load boxes with canned produce the center had grown in surplus. There were a few men and women inside, shying away from the sudden burst of daylight into the small bay. Boxes of stacked goods lay in wait for Colin and Tara to unload. She grabbed a small stack, not anticipating how heavy it was, and stumbled a little. Someone steadied her and she turned around to thank them, pausing.

Eugene took a quick step away and shoved his hands in his pockets, "Hello."

Tara watched him shift awkwardly and could not help but smile, "Thanks, Eug."

"Please don't call me that," he asked in that monotone voice of his. Tara handed the boxes to Colin and brushed her hands off on her jeans, nodding.

"They put you here?" she was surprised actually. Eugene, despite his lying and his almost getting them killed by a herd, was a smart guy who Tara never would have pegged as being someone to put in a cannery.

Eugene shrugged, "I'm helping with harvest stuff. Gwen asked me to do it personally."

"Huh," Tara said, eyeing him, "I'm glad you've got a real mission then?" it was meant to be a joke and she reached out to smack his arm amiably. Eugene looked away from her and tried to distract himself by fiddling absently with one of the partially open boxes of jars.

She immediately regretted the joke, "I'm sorry, I'm just joking with you."

"It's ok," he said, his voice small, "It's nice to be needed for real, I guess."

Eugene was still an odd duck, even before the head injury. He seemed to half shuffle away and half hide himself behind some of the boxes. Tara felt bad, she did not mean to upset him. Eugene waited for a few minutes before deciding to leave the loading bay and go back to the classroom they were using as a planning room for the fields.

The entire operation of the agricultural building was impressive in its own right. It was a ways away from the main campus for good reason. The building looked out onto an impressive amount of acreage that had already been cultivated and worked by the agricultural science students long before the world collapsed. The woman who had told Eugene about the building's history made it clear that this was the easiest building to take back once they had started expanding Athens' walls. The livestock had mostly been eaten or fled, but the fields were easy to clear out and easier to surround once they had been. Not many people used the building during breaks and taking it back only took a half day with no casualties. She recalled how overjoyed everyone had been when they saw the chickens were still alive and well in their walled-in coop, there was a small family of pigs that had been protected by debris some long dead initial survivors had put up as a barricade.

Over time, some newcomers had shown up with horses that they could use in the livestock pens, a few others had brought goats, one of the men caught a few rabbits and they bred them like crazy as a simple meat source. The fur was quickly becoming valuable as well, the woman had explained they stockpiled it to line clothing in the winter. Eugene was impressed at the lengths they had gone to in order to secure and expand the building, but it made sense. Food was the number one issue in any disaster, Athens was lucky enough to have the semi-rural campus they did.

Athens was far from a well-oiled machine, though. Still, Eugene could see the constant worry and desperation in everyone's faces. He was not sure if it was because they were always actually worried or people had just become so accustomed to always being terrified for their lives. He shuffled into the large lab classroom that had been repurposed as a base of operations.

The same woman, Kelly, worked two sectors: building and farming. She was in and out all the time, but now she seemed to be in. She offered Eugene a warm smile, having long since convinced herself he suffered from some affliction before the disaster.

"Eugene, give me your input on this," she turned a very rough sketch of the grounds someone had drawn on a scrap piece of butcher paper, "We're thinking of redistributing the land and giving a priority to the tomato fields. They grow fast, there's a thousand ways to can 'em, and they're a good source of vitamins."

Eugene scanned the drawing quickly and shook his head, "Too much water. You'd have to start irrigating the river to give them priority. Beets and green beans need less water, so does wheat," he shifted uncomfortably when she looked directly at him, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground, "I read a book on it once."

"Eugene," Kelly said warmly, "I'm glad we found you."

At the hospital, Gwen was sitting in the same chair she had been ordered to. She stared straight ahead at the door and felt like she would be holding her breath forever. Glen had been kept overnight to monitor for infection, Maggie had taken the only other chair in the hall to sit with him. Now, Glen was up and moving on his injured leg. Maggie put his arm around her shoulders and tried to function like a makeshift crutch. He winced and hissed when he put pressure on his leg, but forced himself to use it anyway.

Glen gently pushed Maggie away from him when they got to the hallway, "I have to do it."

She understood the need and quietly let him take his arm back. Carefully, she watched him limp down the hallway, his face twisted in an attempt to block out the burning sensation that accompanied each labored step. He saw Gwen at the end of the hallway, leaned over her knees and staring straight ahead at a closed door. Glen made her his destination and started to limp a little faster to her.

Gwen looked up when she saw him and felt herself smile in spite of her worry, "You should be resting, what're you doing?" she got to her feet and held out her hands to help him steady himself when he reached her.

"We don't get to spend all day in bed anymore," Glen said, trying to hide the triumphant grin for a moment. He looked at the door Gwen had been watching and back to her, "Why aren't you inside?"

"They won't let me see him yet, I've been waiting all night," Gwen frowned, impatient worry pushed aside everything else.

The door opened and a familiar nurse stepped into the hall. She stood in front of the two of them and looked from one to the other. Glen immediately recognized her and was slightly upset.

"You told me they were both fine, if they're both fine then why can't she see Lyal?" the nurse had told him they were both all right when he asked about Maggie, clearly she had lied to his face. Glen tried to ignore the apprehension and sudden wariness he felt about the hospital.

To his surprise, the nurse gave him a thick laugh and pointed at Maggie. Maggie wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly exposed, "They are. Lyal is…we're working on him."

There was a deafening silence in the hallway. Glen's mind strained to catch up to his ears and he looked over his shoulder at Maggie and back to the young nurse, "Excuse me?"

Her face fell, she suddenly realized Glen had no idea what she was talking about, "I, uh, Maggie. She's fine."

The woman blanched and looked down the hallway at Maggie, standing frozen in place. Her eyes were wide, fixed on Glen as she tried to gauge his expression. This was not how she wanted to tell him, she was not ready to tell him. Maybe she would never be ready to tell him, but that was her choice. Her skin went cold.

Gwen could not bring herself to move, picking up on the sudden obvious tension now. She was torn between surprise, fear, and a little excitement. They were not her people, but the moment was a mixture of so many things that it felt like they were. Gwen felt like she was made a part of something both terrible and joyous, a secret thing that was both deadly and wonderful.

Rick placed a heavy hand on Maggie's shoulder and looked from her to Glen's dumbfounded expression, "What's wrong?"

Maggie could not take it anymore, she turned on her heel and fled down the hallway. Glen reached out after her and started to hobble-run the direction she had taken off in, "Maggie! Wait!"

Rick stared after them and looked down the hallway at Gwen, "What happened?"

"I'll let Maggie explain that to you," Gwen had considered telling him, but she had the feeling this was something Maggie wanted to explain on her own. The decision had just been made for her once, Gwen did not want to make it for her again.

Rick watched her for a moment, debating whether or not he should fight for the information, but decided against it. He nodded towards the closed door, "Any news?"

"No," Gwen sat down in the chair again and ran her fingers through her hair. She tugged the bandana from around her head and rotated it in her hands, staring at it.

He stood against the wall next to her and leaned back against it, crossing his arms. He said nothing, just stood there, and Gwen could not figure out why. Lyal was not his person, Lyal was her person. He had no business standing here waiting for a progress report on someone he was not responsible for.

It dawned on her that Rick was used to leading a group himself, he was accustomed to being involved in even the most horrible aspects of his people's suffering. She should have been annoyed that he still carried himself like he was in a position of leadership, but she was actually touched by the gesture. Rick took people into his fold particularly strongly when they had been in the trenches with his own group. Lyal had made sure Maggie and Glen got back, he deserved the same kind of watchfulness.

The door to the room opened and Gwen was on her feet, quickly forgetting about Rick. The doctor wiped his hands on an off-white rag and sighed heavily. They had been in the room for six hours cleaning, stitching, bandaging, medicating. Gwen had seen Lyal come back and he had not really looked like he needed that much attention, but she was not about to pretend to know better than a doctor.

"Well?" she finally said, the suspense killing her.

The doctor looked at Rick and back to Gwen, waiting for unspoken permission to proceed. She hesitated for a second before giving it. The doctor took a deep breath and tried to figure out the best place to start and how to phrase Lyal's condition in the best terms possible.

"His injuries weren't that bad," he sighed, "but something else is wrong."

"What's wrong?" Gwen asked, she tried to stifle the flicker of panic in her gut and felt her hand start to shake. He had just said the injuries were not that bad, what could possibly make this a bad situation.

"One of them is already infected. It's bad, we don't have the pharmaceuticals to treat him for this kind of infection," the doctor's voice was soft, trying to keep her calm. He was invoking his best bedside manner with her, but part of him already knew it was futile.

Gwen stumbled over her words at first and slowed down to find them again, "What do you need? We can get it, we can sent a team out. I can ask the scavengers to get it, at least two of them owe me a big enough favor. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Gwen," he said calmly, "You remember when that flu almost wiped us out?" she nodded dumbly, "You remember what we were told when Cora came to trade? She told us the major hospitals had been picked clean, even the veterinarian's office was empty. We took everything, we used all of it just to survive that round of disease. There isn't anything we could request that they would be able to bring in time."

"I don't understand what you're saying," Gwen sat down, her legs suddenly unsteady. The doctor took her hands and crouched in front of her, brushing her hair back gently.

"Gwen, Lyal has a few days. We can keep his fever down and stop him from being delirious for a while. You should make the most of your few days. People don't always get that luxury anymore," he was calm, but firm.

Rick just stared at them, unsure exactly what he was supposed to do. He knew how important Lyal was to Gwen, how terrified she had been when he was lost, and now he could see how useless it all felt to her. The doctor stood and put a hand on her shoulder, turning to Rick.

"She can go see him when she's ready," he walked away to leave the two of them alone in the hallway.

Rick did not know what he was supposed to do, he just acted the way he would if any one of his people had been given this same news. He touched her shoulder and watched her stand up slowly, carefully pulling her to him in a tight hug. He had watched people cope with death for two years, but this part never seemed to get easier.

Gwen did not know what to say or how to feel, she just knew she felt numbness. None of it seemed real, the doctor's information was already blurred in her mind as she seemed to recall his words over and over. She kept trying to recall what he said exactly, but her brain filled in the gaps with information she knew he had not given her. She rested her cheek on Rick's shoulder and could not feel herself move, but knew her arms were around his waist. He placed a hand against her head and held her there for as long as she needed him to.

Finally, Gwen pulled back and looked up into Rick's face. He could see her looking through him maybe seeing him as someone else, but he could not blame her for it. It seemed to have been a long while since Gwen lost someone close to her, a lot longer than it had been for him.

"He's going to die," she said, her voice flat.

Rick nodded slowly, "He's going to die."


End file.
